Scott Golbourne: We have to make Shrewsbury advantage pay
Scott Golbourne feels Shrewsbury Town were caught out by ‘percentage football’ as Gillingham’s direct style yielded a dramatic late point at Montgomery Waters Meadow.
The experienced defender put in another impressive performance at left-back as he continues what has been a positively consistent personal campaign so far.
But Sam Ricketts’ side remain without a League One win, despite coming so close against the Gills through Brad Walker’s 12th-minute header.
Steve Evans’ physical and direct Gillingham were outplayed in a first half deservedly led by their hosts, but the visitors persisted with a route one approach and Shrews were undone at the death through ex-Wolves winger Jordan Graham.
“It is almost percentage football, they are putting the ball in your box 50 or 60 times hoping they might get one or two chances out of it” said 33-year-old left-back Golbourne.
“In the end they did. It’s disappointing and tough to take.
“I think we could’ve done more in possession, we found it difficult in the second half with their pressure to impose our game and not get drawn into their style of play.
“We could’ve been a lot better in possession and try to control a lot more with the ball but it wasn’t to be. There are things we can take from it.
“We fought and battled hard, we’ve got Ethan struggling from a head injury and a few injuries and guys missing.
“All in all we did what we could and gave a decent account of ourselves.”
The defender added: “It was a tough one to take, we felt we’d done enough to win the game.
“It was a difficult game in difficult conditions and we ground it out for large periods, dealt with a lot of their aerial threats and balls into the box.
“So it was really disappointing to concede right at the end of the game.”
Golbourne is one of very few members of the Town squad to have kept his place and not suffered any fitness or availability issues so far this term, playing in every minute of Shrews’ six games in all competitions so far.
He added: “I think we can do a little bit more in the final third and we need to try to have longer spells in the game.
“From what I’ve seen so far we can be extremely good in patches, at Plymouth for 20 minutes we were incredible but it was hard to sustain – which is normal, the opposition are going to have spells.
“But how do we gain another spell? It’s similar today, we had spells really good then it’s difficult to sustain that.
“Then in the second half how do we get back to turning the game our way? How do we get control back? That probably comes from better controlled possession.
“I think now we are evolving into a more possession-based team as opposed to last year we were structured and could spring a counter-attack.
“We’re a different team now with a little more ability going forward, so I think we need to start to utilise that.
“But I think the manager’s right, it is close, from what I’m seeing in training we’re not quite bringing that in games for long enough periods of time but we are close.”
