Shropshire Star

Turn dominance into goals, Sam Ricketts tells his Shrewsbury Town side

Sam Ricketts has called on Shrewsbury Town to learn from their Northampton mistakes and turn their dominance into goals and victories.

Published
Last updated

Town were punished with a sucker-punch against the newly-promoted Cobblers in their first home match of the season as an error from goalkeeper Matija Sarkic proved costly in the 2-1 reverse.

The fixture, played in front of 1,000 Town fans as spectators were welcomed back to professional league football, was largely dominated by Ricketts' side, who were guilty of not hitting the target enough from their 19 efforts on goal.

Shaun Whalley had netted a deserved equaliser for Salop who looked set to force a winner before Sarkic's error inflicted a first league defeat of the campaign.

Ricketts said: "We dominated the game, dominated the ball, we had 19 shots and we can't do much more than that other than put the ball in the back of the net.

"We have to not be conceding sloppy goals. We should be winning that game comfortably, if I'm honest.

"Losing Ethan (Ebanks-Landell to injury) was a big shock for the team to overcome but we should overcome it. I'm not going to hide from it.

"We should be able to adapt and get around it. Maybe it's because we're young and had a lot of (home) debutants on the pitch but I expected us to handle occasions better than we did.

"But we came back into the game and dominated possession, were camped in their half for a huge amount of time and get caught on a sucker-punch.

"We have to learn from it. It's alright saying there was a lot of good stuff but we have to learn, we don't want to be giving cheap goals away when we scored goals we worked extremely hard on."

The boss was frustrated with his side's ability not to convert a number of promising position inside the Cobblers' box, he added: "If the ball is bouncing around in the box put it in the back of the net and we'll ask questions later.

"With 19 shots we should be coming out with three or four goals with the ball popping around in the box."

On Wolves loanee Sarkic, Ricketts, whose injury depleted side host Newcastle United under-21s in the EFL Trophy tomorrow, continued: "Everyone is going to make mistakes. Let's not hide beyond that.

"The problem for a keeper is normally it leads to a goal. I didn't think it let him affect him. He came for catches from corners and wide free-kicks."