Sam Ricketts: Shrewsbury deserved a point

Town's third straight defeat sent them into League One's bottom four, level on points with basement boys Burton Albion, as a disappointing run of results continued.

Ched Evans won the battling contest for Fleetwood with his sharply-taken 25th-minute finish. Fleetwood were good value for the lead but Ricketts' side asked questions late on, hitting the post through Daniel Udoh.

"It was a game of two halves. The wind made it a real tricky game so it wasn't a game of football as such," Ricketts said.

"They had the wind first half and pinned us in without doing too much, Ched have a half-chance on his left foot that he's managed to tuck away.

"There are little things we can do better, definitely. But I said at half-time it'd be completely different, that we'd have the wind, and we ended up pinning them in and pushing them right back till the very end.

"We were pressing, blocked shots, deflected shots just wide, Dan hits the post. It just didn't fall for us, didn't go our way. They got the goal and we didn't."

Shrewsbury were unable to add to the league low of just five goals from their opening games.

Ricketts added: "I think we were certainly worthy of a point. In the first half they were on top, in the second half we were on top.

"They came at us once or twice last on as we were pushing leaving us more open.

"On another day they deflect and go in but unfortunately we're in that little spell at the moment where we're having no luck, there's been refereeing decisions go against us at home, just the ball fell for them and not us.

"We pushed them right back and they were hanging on for dear life late on. We just couldn't get the goal the endeavour deserved."

Town were missing Jason Cummings through illness - not coronavirus related - and handed a second Salop debut to free agent signing Marc Pugh 11 years after he departed the club.

Shrewsbury were stifled in a game controlled by the swirling wind that was then with the visitors in the second period, but Ricketts' side were unable to seriously stretch former goalkeeper Jayson Leutwiler.

"It's annoying and frustrating because we've changed an awful lot to get more goals," the boss said of his side's low scoring.

"We've had ample chances, not so much tonight because it was a real 50-50 game. It wasn't that type of game.

"We've had 19 or 20 shots and only score one, which is a big disappointment. We've got to convert when we are creating that many chances we have to score more goals."

On falling into the drop zone, the Town chief said: "It's way too early to look into that, it's very early. Performances have been very good, tonight wasn't a footballing game.

"We showed another side of us where we didn't allow Fleetwood to dominate us, we dominated them second half, and came back into it but couldn't get the goal."