Shrewsbury Town striker Daniel Udoh desperate to soak up all the goalscoring secrets

The striker has started in attack in each of Steve Cotterill’s two league games in charge of Town and hopes to make it a third in tomorrow’s trip to league leaders Hull City, writes Lewis Cox.

Udoh, 24, netted the first goal of Cotterill’s tenure – an extra-time FA Cup winner against Oxford City – just his second goal of the campaign, and the striker admits he needs more goals.

But he is encouraged to have got the nod from the new man in charge and now hopes that Cotterill’s assistant Wilbraham, who was appointed last week, can inspire a regular goal touch. Udoh was 26-goal top scorer at AFC Telford before making the move across Shropshire.

“We’re lucky enough to have Aaron Wilbraham in now who scored a lot of goals at this level,” Udoh said of the coach who scored 144 goals in his career.

“Whenever I get the chance to speak to him, whenever we’re doing analysis with the manager, if you’re not in the right place the manager will tell you first and then you can go and speak to Aaron.

“He shows what the manager wants, why he wants it and why I should be there, because that’s where the chances flash by.

“He’s been really good to me, we’ve spoke a lot, giving me little tips about what to do, how the gaffer likes his strikers to play which helps.

“You can speak to the gaffer but when you have a striker as assistant he knows about how the game is for you and what you need. He’s been telling me about my hold-up play, my link-up, making sure I’m in the right areas.”

Udoh opened his account for the season with a dramatic 99th-minute leveller against Burton under Sam Ricketts, from which Town were unable to build a platform to kickstart their season.

The Nigeria-born striker readily admits he understands why a lack of goals meant he was not a regular starter earlier in the campaign.

But he hopes to improve under the new management.

“The gaffer said to me about that,” Udoh smiled when asked about Wilbraham’s goalscoring record at Bristol City under Cotterill.

“He said he’s made worse strikers than me score goals!”

Udoh added: “When you work with him you see how detailed he is. We were working with him today and it made me remember the Netflix show Money Heist, with ‘The Professor’.

“How he plans everything, how it’s going to work, where it’s going to end up, he showed us and it happened.

“I’ve not worked with anyone with that attention to detail.”

Former New Bucks Head striker Udoh was likened to a ‘sponge’ by boss Cotterill, who hailed the frontman’s eagerness to take in detail.

“He can be a better striker,” Cotterill said of the 24-year-old. “He’s a young lad, learning, willing, I think he’ll get better with time even though we want him to be better right now. That’s part of the learning curve. Because he’s young and hasn’t played a lot at this level, Dan will be up and down, we’ve got to try to get more ups out of him. You always look for that (eager attitude), if they haven’t got that then you may as well not have them.”

Cotterill added: “Younger lads always have growth anyway, you’ve got to make sure you don’t catch them too late. He is still one of those that wants to absorb information, he wants to know should he stand here or there or about his movement.

“We went through a couple of things this morning, he’s probably about two yards about where he needs to be, but those two yards make the difference. When he moves those two yards it works.

“This game’s about a picture. He’s one that can definitely improve. But it’s not just about younger players, older players can as well, if you come to a team that want to play football you can hopefully help. I haven’t met a footballer yet that can’t improve, but the thing is you can only improve them with their consent. Quite a few seem keen to learn. They’ve asked to do more and I thought that was good.”

Town, meanwhile, will equal a run of form from the end of the 2007/08 season if they go without a win in their first trip to Hull in almost 18 years.

They are currently winless in 10 league games and have not gone without a victory in 11 since the run of 15 games without a win towards the end of the first season at the New Meadow, amid which Gary Peters parted company by mutual consent.

The trip to the KCOM Stadium is Cotterill’s first away game with Town, who were just the ninth visiting team to play at Hull’s new stadium after it opened in late 2002.

Salop are winless in seven against the Tigers, dating back to November 199. Cotterill says he has no fresh injury concerns among the players who he has selected in the league so far.