Steve Cotterill is keen for Shrewsbury Town to enjoy a winning start
Shrewsbury know all too well how a poor start can hamper a League One campaign.
Town managed just one win in their opening 15 league game last season, almost all of which were played behind closed doors with supporters locked out, feeling helpless from home.
Thirteen of those were under former boss Sam Ricketts. The one victory he and Town managed was on the road at AFC Wimbledon’s temporary Loftus Road home.
Indeed, after a trio of stunning away wins, Shrewsbury – and new boss Steve Cotterill – had to wait until December 29 for the first home win of the season. An unwanted club record. Perversely, in a strange twist of irony, that Christmas night was the last time Cotterill managed from the Montgomery Waters Meadow dugout – until tomorrow.
Nearby Burton Albion are the visitors. That too is rather apt as floundering Burton were just a point above second-bottom Salop on Cotterill’s appointment.
And the Brewers, under a replacement of their own in Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink – taking over for a second time – staged a recovery equally as impressive as Shrews and Cotterill and would go on to finish 16th, one place and three points better off than the Shropshire men.
Cotterill knows, his own glorious and most-welcome return aside and that of uncapped supporter numbers, that a good start is essential to any success a season has ahead.
“You can get off to a good start and it would be nice to for us a football club because we didn’t get off to a good start last year,” said Town boss Cotterill.
“And that forever puts you under pressure then as a club, for staying in the division.
“If you can get off to a good start then I think it’s great. I’d like to get off to a good start and build on it, rather than have to recover from a poor start, because that’s difficult.
“A good start keeps the lads in a good mood, keeps them buoyed going into games.
“But there can also be at clubs where you haven’t quite got in all the players you’d want, but also in a club players who want to leave so therefore they don’t put their full commitment into the club.”
Some fans have highlighted concern at Town’s lack of squad depth heading into the curtain-raiser. Including three goalkeepers and two teenage strikers Shrews have a squad of 20, with fitness worries to three.
“No,” was Cotterill’s firm answer when asked about concern surrounding his squad’s lack of depth. “Because if I’d have brought somebody in this week, I’d have already known where my starting line-up was going to be anyway, for the work we’d done in pre-season.
“Any player that comes in now, yesterday, today, tomorrow, it would be incredibly difficult to get them in and to know all the other lads, what they do, the fitness levels. It would’ve been very difficult to start them and the likelihood is I wouldn’t have.”
The boss insisted there will be no new arrivals in time for kick-off against the Brewers and that nothing was imminent.
