Boss identifies the ‘big moments’ costing Shrewsbury Town after Fleetwood loss

Gavin Cowan described Shrewsbury Town’s defeat at Fleetwood Town as “difficult to take” as he insisted he could not fault his players’ effort.

Town suffered a fourth defeat in their opening five League Two games on the Fylde Coast and remain without a league goal on the road this season.

Salop were unable to respond with a result after their heavy defeat at Rochdale in midweek, but Cowan was keen to highlight the improvement in performance and attitude.

He said: “It’s difficult to take. It’s a different type of defeat, but they all feel as bad as each other, don’t they.

“I feel like I couldn’t ask any more from the players in terms of their endeavour, their hard work, their attitude.

“The difference between this and Tuesday night was just that’s more of a performance that I expect in terms of endeavour.

“We would call it minimum requirement. There’s no medal required. But when you talk about the hard work, the desire to doing a job and a half, I thought the players were right at it.

“We competed, competed for big moments of the game.”

Town conceded towards the end of both halves, with Fleetwood’s opener coming from a corner where Cowan and his players felt there had been a foul on Josh Davison.

Shrewsbury were unable to find a response before Aaron Loupalo-Bi’s late strike sealed the points.

Salop remain in the bottom places of the division after taking just three points from their opening five league games.

“It was always going to be tough coming here, but I don’t think we were helped out in the big moments,” Cowan continued.

“I feel like the first goal - we had the benefit of looking back at it, it’s catastrophic. A decision like that, to allow that to go past is very difficult.

“In moments like what we’re in at the moment, going a goal down, it hurts. It’s difficult for a team to really have that comeback ability, the bounce back ability.

“It’s hard to come back from that. It’s hard to be resilient when things aren’t going your way. I feel like that was the difference today.

“I feel the difference in the teams today was that they had the momentum of belief.

“With the difficult situation of losing the games that we're losing, we didn’t have that belief. Which is tough because there’s no slight on the players.

“It’s big moments that have let us down again. I don’t think we get out of their half in the second half. But again, they have the chance.

“We need to do better for the second goal. It’s a scuffed shot that goes in and that’s just our luck at the moment.”