Paul Hurst will wait to get his top Shrewsbury Town targets
Paul Hurst is comfortable playing the transfer waiting game – and insists it is on his head if Shrewsbury miss their top targets.
As the close-season enters its fourth week, Hurst is yet to add any fresh names to his Town squad. But he has called for patience from supporters as he sounds out his top targets.
Hurst is keen to improve – and add more strength in depth – to the squad he inherited as he rebuilds in his first summer with Town.
The Greenhous Meadow chief has conducted talks with enough players to fill a squad, but is aware that holding out may produce the best deals.
“Patience.” Hurst responded. “Patience is a virtue – I’ve got to believe in that.
“It’s worked in the past. There may be one or two things you can get done pretty quickly but others take time.
“It is a patience game and I understand fans want to see who the first signing will be, who will follow and what the squad will consist of.
“Am I naive enough to think all of the talks we’ve had will be ‘yes’? They won’t.
“So you have back-ups to that. If I’ve got say five midfielders in mind, if number one is a ‘no’ initially and I sign number five, number one may change his mind.”
The Town boss conducted talks with player of the season Mat Sadler yesterday, while a decision on the future of young goalkeeper Shaun Rowley, 20, is also expected imminently.
Both players were offered deals by Hurst – who has also confirmed Gary Deegan is one of his current crop available for transfer.
Hurst is confident in playing ‘the game’, as he refers to it, and added: “That’s where there must be an element of patience. It does come to a point eventually where you don’t want to miss out on anything.
“There’s an element of it all being a game. I’m prepared to wait, if that ends up costing us that’s on my head and not anyone else’s.”
He said: “I wish I was twiddling my thumbs! As a football manager you don’t ever switch off properly.
“I can assure you that at 5.15am, my regular waking time at the minute – which I don’t chose – the thing on my mind isn’t holidays or my kids or my wife, which it should be – it’s about what calls I need to make and whether there’s someone I forgot about from the past.
“I can assure people there’s not a day gone by where I haven’t had some conversation linked with football and often it’s a lot more than one.”
