Sam Ricketts pleased to see his Shrewsbury Town team learning on the job
Shrewsbury boss Sam Ricketts is pleased to see his Shrewsbury side learning vital lessons in methods of securing crucial wins in their survival plight.
Saturday's mammoth and ultimately comfortable 2-0 victory at relegation rivals Southend lifted Town from 19th to 15th in League One and up to 46 points with the safety target of just over 50 points in their sights.
Top scorer Fejiri Okenabirhie, who took his tally for the season to 15 goals, and defender Luke Waterfall scored after the break as Town won away in the league for just the third time this season.
Ricketts conceded Shrewsbury were not at their best to put away a poor and managerless Southend side but, while he admits his side still have much to learn, the boss sees progression in his team's performance.
He said: "We're delighted, three points at this stage is huge. A draw wouldn't have been a bad result but a win is excellent.
"The big thing is we are learning all of the time as well. We're far from the finished article, far from where we want to be but we're learning.
"We've won a game where we had to dig in, normally when we've won games we've had to play very, very well to win – the slight difference was Wycombe and being ruthless late on.
"We were good, solid and it was a real professional performance."
Salop came unstuck a few weeks ago going up against a Rochdale side who had just sacked boss Keith Hill.
Southend had dismissed Chris Powell a few days prior to Town's visit while this Saturday's visitors Scunthorpe axed Stuart McCall just over a week ago.
"You could see in the first 10 or 20 minutes the home fans were really supporting with the change in manager, they were trying to get that bounce," added Ricketts.
"We had to remain resolute in that period and not give them anything to hang their hat on, which we didn't do away at Rochdale, we gave them an opportunity to score and hang their hat.
"That's a real big tick on our learning curve, it doesn't mean we'll do it every week but it means we've learned from that and we're better than we were a few weeks ago."
Ricketts confirmed midfielder and stand-in skipper Ollie Norburn went off at half-time with a repeat of his Achilles injury and will be assessed at Sundorne over the coming days.
