Dave Edwards: Start of pre-season a clean slate for Shrewsbury Town

I've experienced it, I've been relegated before, but as soon as you walk in the door on that first day of pre-season, it's a clean slate. There's a new air of optimism and you want to start the season extremely well. 

In my career, the only time it hasn't worked like that is when you've still got players under contract who are looking to move out. I've had that at Wolves before when we got relegated from the Premier League to the Championship, and then from the Championship to League One and it wasn't a settled squad.

For Shrewsbury, the amount of players who were out of contract, the changes which have already happened, pretty much everyone coming back has got a fair chance of playing.

They will want to be there as well, want to be competing to try and get Shrewsbury back into League One and having a good, solid season.

There will be optimism as a player and you really want to impress. You want to show the manager that you've been working hard in the off-season, you want to show your fitness and you're already competing. Pre-season is all about competing with your own team-mates.

As a central midfielder, I'd be up against all the other centre midfielders in pre-season, and I wanted to show that I was fitter than them, stronger than them, and when the games come around, I was performing better than them. 

It's the only time in the season where you have that real competitive edge against your own players. You're really working hard against each other to make sure you're in that team on the opening day of the season and it's all to play for.

There will be some hard sessions, although players these days are naturally fit, but what is really important for Michael Appleton is the tactical work.

He's got six or seven weeks to hone exactly how he wants to play, so that'll be a good opportunity for everyone to learn a lot. 

It's very different to what's been done over the last 10 years at Shrewsbury, from being very workman-like teams who try to grind out results to being a possession-based team. It's a huge shift in the way we play football.

Based on my experience as a player, this is also the time of the year where you've got to be ultra-selfish, and not in a bad way, but in a professional way. 

Your wife, your kids, your family, friends, they need to know for six weeks you are fully committed to your fitness, so you know you're going to work hard in training. But off the back of that, it's all about recovery, it's all about good sleep, it's all about good nutrition. All those things have to come before everything else.

When I used to get home from a long day of pre-season and my wife and the kids wanted to go for a walk or they wanted to go out shopping, I said no.

I was recovering and making sure I did all the right things, ready to go the next day. It's so, so important, because a good pre-season really sets you up for a good season and gives you that good base level of fitness, ready to move forward. 

Meanwhile, Shrewsbury have unveiled their new home kit, which is always an exciting time.

I'm not a fan of having one every season, I used to like it being one every couple of years.

However, it is always exciting, especially for the younger fans. But I think this shirt in particular will excite a lot of the older fans. 

It's a retro shirt, going back to the two years from 1983 to 1985 and I think it's an absolute belter.

It's a little bit different in style to what we've worn in recent years, with a lot more amber, but I really like it.

That mid-80s time was quite an iconic period for the football club and I think this kit will be a big hit.

It's nice to have Shropshire Homes as the sponsor too. They've been heavily involved with the football club for a number of years now and do a lot of good work with the Shrewsbury Town Foundation.

It keeps that local connection to the club and there's a lot of big Shrewsbury fans involved in that company from top to bottom.