Shrewsbury no resting place to Micky Mellon

The Town boss took his side to a club well-known for having its own identity last Saturday at Millwall.

But the Scot believes Shrewsbury has its own heritage as a county town and Shropshire's only Football League club.

Mellon concedes that in a picturesque county, a rural town like Shrewsbury is seen in some quarters as a place to settle down – or even retire – but he is determined to put the area on the map.

He said: "They call it the 'graveyard of ambition,' because it's such a fantastic place.

"That doesn't mean you come here and down tools, but a lot of people who come here don't want to go anywhere else because it's such a nice place.

"I think Shrewsbury is unique. It's in a fantastic part of the world that a lot of people like to come on their holidays to.

"But we don't tell a lot of people that because we don't want it to be crowded.

"It's a beautiful town and the football club has a real history so in its own right Shrewsbury is a really nice club and it's unique.

"Shrewsbury has its own identity and its own history as much as anywhere else.

"But it's certainly not going to be my graveyard of ambition because I want to continue driving this place forward."

Mellon stated before a ball was kicked this season that he wanted to build the best team Town has ever had.

But he was forced to sell Connor Goldson and Ryan Woods before the end of August and also lost fellow home-grown youngsters Josh Ginnelly and Harry Lewis.

And he insists Salop need to have more seasons in League One to push forwards. He said: "How far we can take it? I don't know.

"Out of the last 25 years, we've only been in this division for two of them. It's not enough, so getting this club to stay and be established in this division for longer is a massive ambition.

"It's a tough ask for us, because there's a lot of clubs in this league paying wages that would make people's hair curl.

"But it doesn't mean we're not up for the fight; it just means we've maybe got to do it a different way. We're keen to do that, but for 25 years the club has struggled to do that.

"We've got to compete against clubs with parachute payments now and we'll never be able to compete with some of the wages bouncing around.

"We're still working on a way to compete with that."

A young Town reserve side containing five trialists went down 3-1 away to Bradford yesterday.

Ethan Jones equalised for Town in the 38th minute but Sam Wright, Ellis Hudson and Sumaili Cissa clinched the points for the Bantams, who started with six professionals.