Tactics, systems and how Steve Cotterill seeks Shrewsbury edge to win

Steve Cotterill predominantly operates with a 3-4-1-2 at Shrewsbury Town with the wing-backs offering a threat from wide areas, but he has changed things up in games to try to give Salop an advantage when needed.

Cotterill is very good tactically, and his attention to small details is something that has been talked about by the players and the staff around him in recent weeks.

In some games, they will surrender possession and be defensively resolute and try to hit on the counter-attacks, whereas in others, they will pass the ball more and look to build from the back.

The Town manager has said on more than one occasion in his press conferences that you cannot just play one way because the other teams will figure you out.

And like most modern coaches, the boss does not think the system is the key ingredient, he expects his team to play in a similar way regardless of it, he feels it is the game plan in that particular match that is important.

“People think tactics are systems,” he said.

“That has nothing to do with it. It is about how you play. I would not see us playing too differently if we played 4-3-3 or if we played 3-5-2. It would not make a lot of difference.

“It is what is your tactic, in that game, to win it?

“You would not just throw them out there and say ‘off you go’ in a 4-3-3.

“Tactically, it is about thinking about where you can exploit the opposition.

“And potentially thinking about where they would exploit us.

“It is about negating their strengths, playing to our strengths and trying to find the opposition’s weaknesses – and making sure they don’t find ours.”

In their opening 21 games this season, Shrewsbury have been very consistent – only on a couple of occasions has the team not been at the races.

Sometimes results have not gone their way, but they have competed in pretty much every game.

There was a period at the start of November when they went winless in six, but they deserved so much more than they got for their efforts – against teams with budgets much bigger than their own.

The plan now for Cotterill’s men is to maintain the feel-good factor around the club and to keep putting in those performances into the New Year.

They have six games scheduled for January, which could rise to seven if the FA Cup clash against Sunderland ends in a draw.

There are lots of fixtures for the manager and his staff to prepare the players for, and he gave an insight into what that looks like and how much of his time it takes up.

“You don’t ever stop thinking about it,” the boss said when asked how much thought he puts in during the week into thinking about the next game.

“But you have other things that you need to do.

“Sometimes you cannot always concentrate on one problem and one issue, and the amount of time you spend with your head in a laptop is difficult.

“You watch a game, and you might think it is only 90 minutes, but it takes two-and-a-quarter hours to watch a game.

“You will stop it, write things down, and then go back to it.

“I think if you watch a game properly, it is possibly another 45 minutes on top of it because of stopping and starting.

“Quite often on a Thursday morning, I go back into a team meeting, and I know the lads will be looking and thinking about how many sheets of paper has he got there that we will be going through.

“And that is not just me, you know. The staff do it as well, they look at games Dave (Longwell) will look at games.

“Aaron Wilbraham will focus more on the individual side of things, so he will say to me where are we with the individuals what do you think about this?

“Brian (Jensen) will work on set-plays, certainly more against because that is his goalkeeper area.

“And then you have the analysts who have their bit.

“That is why sometimes when you come out after a game there is so much disappointment because you spend so much time preparing for a game, and if you do it properly it is hard work. It is good, but it can be hard.

“And that is why the disappointment is there because you think ‘jeez I have done all that and we’ve been beaten by a goal when we did not deserve to be beaten’ but you have to keep doing it.

“After all, it’s the right thing to do, and you must do it.”