Sam Ricketts tells Shrewsbury Town to keep on running
Sam Ricketts wants his Shrewsbury side to learn what makes them tick – and insists running harder is key.
Town turned on the style in the second half of Tuesday’s turnaround at the Bet365 Stadium to dump Stoke out of the FA Cup.
Ricketts’ side now face a mammoth fourth-round tie with Wolves later this month, but first must take care of important League One business, where they remain three points above the drop zone ahead of Saturday’s trip to Blackpool.
The boss made a tactical tweak and opted for 3-5-2 as Town sealed their memorable comeback in the Potteries. Now Ricketts, who has won one from seven league games in charge, wants his players to understand the formula for success.
“The group of players are growing in belief, slowly,” said the Salop chief. “Success and belief is not just a straight-line graph, there’s dips.
“We were disappointed at the weekend, we were good first half and poor second half.
“Tuesday we were poor first half, good second half. So it’s getting them to believe in themselves and them to know what makes a good performance from them.
“That’s probably the biggest thing they need to take out (of it).”
Ricketts stressed after watching his side knock Stoke out of the Cup that Shrewsbury need to play ‘flat out’ to win games, rather than drifting away from 100 per cent.
One of his strong messages to the squad is that Town must run harder and further than opposition to give themselves chances at success.
He added: “I didn’t apologise afterwards when I said ‘lads, football is a running game’.
“If you want to play football and not run, you’re playing the wrong sport. With all due respect to however good you are, you have to be an athlete and run if you want to be a good footballer.
“A pure example is Bernardo Silva in Man City versus Liverpool. A gifted, gifted footballer, he ran 13.8km – so don’t tell me you don’t have to run to play football.”
