Boss hopeful 'home truths' will bring best out of Shrewsbury Town winger

Winger Scully has been sidelined for more than a month through injury having tasted regular action, including three league starts, in the first month of the season.

The 26-year-old required both knee and ankle surgery at former club Portsmouth and picked up an issue with his groin towards the end of August, which was initially described not as bad as first feared.

But it was enough to keep the Irishman out until last weekend, where Scully was an unused substitute in Town's 2-1 home defeat to MK Dons. Head coach Appleton revealed on Friday that he held honest talks with the summer recruit and expects to see a positive reaction.

"It was one of those where injuries have been an issue for him for a couple of seasons now," said Appleton, who coached Scully at Lincoln during the best spell of the winger's career.

"Prior to coming into the football club  I had lots of conversations with him. I knew he'd been training for a while, but not at the games. Then he had a little bit of a setback with the injury."

Appleton, whose side travel to Barrow on Saturday, said: "I'm not going to go into too much detail with it, but we had an open and frank conversation about three weeks ago.

"I told him a few home truths because I felt I could do that. I've known him for the best part of four, maybe five years now, since I first took him into Lincoln as a young kid from West Ham. I tried to get him to remember what got him to the point where he was performing in the Championship.

"So he took it on board exactly how I would expect him to because he's that type of lad. I'm pretty confident that, whether it's in the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months, we'll see the best version of Anthony Scully."

Scully had trained at former loan club Colchester during pre-season to prove his fitness levels to Appleton and Town before agreeing a one-year deal.