Steve Cotterill urges Shrewsbury Town to be 'more ruthless'
Shrewsbury Town boss Steve Cotterill has urged his side to be more ‘ruthless’ after they lost their first home game of the season to Accrington Stanley at the weekend.
Town lost 1-0 at Montgomery Waters Meadow thanks to a late second-half header from Tommy Leigh.
Cotterill’s men had dominated the first 57 minutes of proceedings, with his side missing several guilt edge opportunities to open the scoring. But the complexion of the game changed when defender Tom Flanagan was given two yellow cards in the space of five seconds, reducing Salop to 10 men.
Despite the sending off the boss said his side had enough good chances to have a comfortable lead.
He said: “We’ve got to hit the target, got to score when we get a couple of opportunities and be more ruthless, that’s the bottom line.
“If we do that, then even if we get the sending off, we haven’t got to worry about it because we are a couple of goals to the good.”
“The sending-off has cost us the game, along with the missed chances we had when we were on top in the match.
“We’ve had probably more chances, more shots, efforts on target.
“The only reason the possession stats will be down is having 10 men for the period of time.”
Shrewsbury will have to dust themselves off quickly because they take on Carlisle in the EFL Cup tomorrow and Leahy says it is a great chance to get back to winning ways.
He said: “I think if it is cup or league, we need to win games and get that winning feeling at the football club, and it has to start on Tuesday.
“Even though they’re a league below it will be challenging as there are no easy games in the EFL.”
