‘Highly confident’ - New owner lays down Shrewsbury Town promotion ambition

Ambitious new Shrewsbury Town owner Scott Davidson has vowed to deliver success at the club and set his sights on promotion.

The Miami businessman and Town chairman has outlined his ambitions after completing his takeover, with improving the club’s infrastructure a key priority as he looks to build a more sustainable model and, in turn, increase playing budgets.

Speaking for the first time since his company Biscayne ST LLC completed its acquisition of the club, Davidson insisted he has arrived at Shrewsbury to make an impact.

The new owner - who has overseen promotions at Scottish side The Spartans - said: “We joke around, maybe it’s more of a Scottish thing, that I’m the most optimistic guy in Edinburgh. And that it used to be Craig (Graham) until I came along, is what they say.

“We need to improve every day. My experience is, if you make small improvements every day, whatever you do, you will have great success.

“We haven’t come here to be shy, and we haven’t come here to not be ambitious. We’ve come here to be successful.

“And successful to us will mean doing really, really well on the pitch and moving up the leagues, and being a club that people talk about around how wonderfully they’ve done.

“But most importantly, the supporters are extremely proud and say, ‘Can you believe where we are today?’

“I don’t think that you can put timescales on things, just because there are many things that we don’t control. But what we do control, we’re going to do really well.”

Davidson will meet the press and supporters for the first time at a fans’ forum on Thursday, ahead of the first game of the new era when Salop host Oldham Athletic on Saturday, for which he, sporting director Brad Friedel and director Will Dotson will be in attendance.

He also promised supporters that the new ownership group would be “completely devoted to creating success”, with progress built on the small improvements made each day.

He told supporters: “They’re going to have real insight into what is going on, because I don’t think there are going to be too many secrets that we have. We want to make sure that we get everybody on board and all of us pulling in the same direction.

“I’m hoping what they see is not just all the success of infrastructure and all these other things we do, but they see us play really well on the pitch, and that makes them feel great about, not just the pitch, but what’s going on in their lives, and hopefully we can help the town continue to do well.

“I expect there to be a lot of success in the next couple of years. I’m highly confident.”