Take belief from Sunderland win – Shrewsbury boss Sam Ricketts
Boss Sam Ricketts has implored his jubilant Shrewsbury Town side to build on the belief gained from beating League One giants Sunderland.
Town secured one of the biggest victories of Ricketts’ 11 months in charge with a fine 1-0 home victory against the Black Cats thanks to Jason Cummings’ fine first-half finish.
The hosts defended superbly to fend off heavy late Sunderland pressure to go unbeaten in four league games and Ricketts believes the outcome can be instrumental to the development of his ‘growing’ side.
“The lads were jubilant with the win. I have expectations because I know what we can do. We won but it’s still the same in that we’re a really young side,” said Ricketts.
“There was a bit more experience in the starting XI compared to the previous game but we’re really young in coming together and evolving as a team.
More on the win against Sunderland:
“It will only improve, it’s really important to get these wins along the way because it adds belief for the players but also for the supporters to see we are on the right path.
“It’s not a smooth path, unfortunately, there are bumps along the way and we have to deal with those but remain focused on what we’re trying to achieve and generally we’ve done that really well.”
Ricketts switched his usual 3-5-2 formation to a 3-4-3 with Dave Edwards and Shaun Whalley in support of Cummings.
Asked if he saw it as one of his top wins in charge of Town, who climbed to 12th with the win, the boss replied: “I don’t know, I think Portsmouth on the first day of the season was a great win. I’m not going to get carried away, we’ve not rolled Sunderland over, dominated the game or won three or four nil.
“But we’ve showed signs in our game that we can certainly do that. It’s a very good win, no more or no less than that.
“I look at it as another three points, a different style of game we’ve played.
“Belief can definitely be taken from it. The other night (against Gillingham), the disappointment at drawing a game was like we’d been beat and that shows the standards we’ve set.
“We were really keen to get back on it and I was delighted with how we approached it.
“I don’t like talking about runs but we’re just ticking over nicely. We are improving, we have to maintain that improvement.”
“We’ll analyse the game, how can we improve from it? Because if we’re not improving we’re going backwards.”
Ryan Giles and Daniel Udoh both missed out with knee injuries. A timescale has yet to be determined for the former, with Ricketts suggesting it could be ‘days or weeks’, while Udoh is set to miss two to four weeks.
