Michael Appleton: Shrewsbury did not do the basics well enough at Harrogate

The Salop head coach watched his side lose 2-0 in North Yorkshire, a result which was their sixth defeat of the campaign and their second in succession.  

Jack Muldoon scored the first goal of the game when he capitalised on a mistake by Toto Nsiala. The second came from substitute Conor McAleny when he fired home from outside the box.

“It was tough,” he reflected. “It was tough for many reasons. Obviously, losing a couple of players to injury didn't help in the game.

“I've put a lot of praise on the players over the last five or six games in terms of performance, and don’t get me wrong, there were moments in the game that were good and I was happy with.

“But there was a lot of other stuff today that disappointed me a little bit.

“I thought we'd lost too many duels and second balls, especially in the middle of the park, which sort of reflected their two goals in a way.

“The reality is you've got to do the basics in football right if you're going to win games.

“You have to be competitive, you have to win your first duels, you have to win your second duels. I just didn't think we did that enough.

“We had our moments in the game, especially in that first half, where a little bit of lack of quality or the wrong decision let us down at the right time.

“Ultimately, the longer the game goes on at 0-0 with the stretch that we're having at the minute, not scoring that first goal, it gets a little bit more challenging.

“If you concede a goal late on, it obviously makes it difficult to get back into it.

“Towards the end we went to a back four and put the three strikers up there.

“At that point, I'll use the word desperate, but you get yourself into a position where you've got to try and find something, you've got to do something a little bit different, and we went forward a little bit quicker.

“Even though we huffed and puffed, we still didn't really do enough still for me in that final 20 minutes.”

Sam Stubbs picked up an injury in the first half. He tried to continue, but he had to be withdrawn five minutes after the re-start.

Just 10 minutes later, Shrews were hit with more injury woes as Tom Anderson picked up a calf issue - he was replaced by Luca Hoole.

Appleton confirmed post-match that Stubbs’ injury won’t keep him out for too long, and they will have to wait to find out the severity of Anderson’s issue.

“Ando has a bit of a calf issue,” he said. “So we’ll probably know a bit more about that in two or three days.  

“I think Stubbsy will only be maybe two or three days. There was a little bit of an issue there in the first half where he got caught and he jabbed his ankle.

“But I don't think it's too outrageous. I think he could miss a few days and hopefully be available for next week.”