‘Really interesting’ - Cowan welcomes fight for Shrewsbury Town’s No.1 shirt

Gavin Cowan is relishing a healthy battle for the gloves at Shrewsbury Town following the arrival of Sam Proctor.

Teenage goalkeeper Proctor has joined on a season-long loan from Aston Villa and will compete with Will Brook for the number one shirt.

Both featured in Salop’s first home pre-season outing against Everton Under-21s on Tuesday night. Brook produced a superb late first-half save before Proctor helped preserve the clean sheet after the interval.

Asked whether healthy competition between the two young goalkeepers was what he wanted, Cowan said: “That was the idea. Sam Proctor comes in with incredible calibre.

“We’ve got two really young, talented goalkeepers. So it's going to be really, really interesting to see how that pans out.

“But two great lads, two great goalkeepers. And yeah, both of them performed well on Tuesday night.”

After the impact of Matt Cox during his loan spell from Brentford in the second half of last season, Town are hoping Proctor can make a similar impression while also providing fierce competition for Brook.

Brook spent 18 consecutive league matches on the bench as Cox enjoyed an excellent run of form. But when he returned to the side for the final three games of the campaign, he showed his quality with a string of assured performances.

Proctor arrives in Shropshire with impressive international pedigree, having represented England at every youth level from under-16s through to the under-20s.

When announcing his arrival from Villa, Cowan compared the youngster to Cox, who made such a positive impact during his time at the Croud Meadow.

“He’s been in the England set up for some time now. He’s really highly regarded at Aston Villa and a little bit like Matt Cox.

“They feel like he needs to get out, get games and just build his experience. And for us, we have to find a sweet spot of him developing but also getting three points.

“So he’ll come in and compete with Will now. Will's taken the number one spot and he’ll want to keep that.

“So at the moment, we're just looking at those two through pre-season to see who's going to come out on top as number one.”