Sam Ricketts aims to be loan arranger for Shrewsbury Town

The Shrewsbury manager said one of his recruitment challenges was to add exciting young players with the talent and drive to succeed.

Goalkeeper Henderson and midfielder Godfrey were central to Town’s run to the play-off final in 2017/18 and have this season gone on to win promotion to the Premier League with Sheffield United and Norwich respectively.

And Rangers midfielder Docherty – who won Town’s player of the season prize last weekend – was a massive hit with the Shrewsbury faithful this season.

“That’s always the challenge,” said Ricketts, who is expected to use up all five of his loan player slots.

“The recruitment is ongoing consistently. We try to bring players in to improve.

“And as they improve with us they move on to bigger and better things.

“You look at the likes of last year. Dean Henderson and Ben Godfrey got promoted from the Championship this season. That’s a continual escalator where we need to pick the right players and we need them to ride the escalator with us and keep climbing the football leagues.”

Loan players often bring the X-Factor to Football League clubs and Ricketts stressed he would be in the market this summer for young players with an ambitious mentality to succeed and progress.

“That’s the potential that loans can do for you,” Ricketts added on the inspiration loan players can bring to the club.

“It’s just trying to find the right players with the right mentality – obviously they have to have quality as well – but they have to want the desire to come here and work hard and commit to the club.

“Greg Docherty is committed to the club. Whether he’s a loan player or not he really wanted to do well for Shrewsbury.

“He didn’t have the air of a loan player going back to his club. He had the air of loan player here permanently and it was his everything. That’s one of the biggest compliments you can pay.”