Tuesday's emphatic win was a great boost to us all but of course we need to capitalize on it today with another win. The fact that we didn't ease off in the second-half was encouraging and the clean sheet was even more so. I believe Gooch will be unavailable as well as Wyke but McGeady is back from suspension so hopefully we'll stick with almost the same team that did so well against Tranmere. Shrewsbury are mid-table and have drawn six out of thirteen, managing less than a goal a game on average so I doubt if we'll see too much attacking flair from them. I think we'll win and I'm hoping Lynch and Willis will combine well again to help keep a clean sheet so my match prediction is 2-0 to us.
When I got the team news our business end was looking strong with Maguire, McGeady, Watmore and Grigg all starting. I got SAFSEE on still feeling optimistic. It took us only three minutes to create a scoring chance when Hume set up McGeady and he shot just over from ten yards out. We kept up the pressure and were finding plenty of pace down our left flank. Shrewsbury won the first corner of the game after ten minutes but Burge held the ball cleanly. We won our own first corner shortly afterwards and should have challenged harder as it was easily cleared. By the twentieth minute Shrewsbury were coming much more into it and shortly afterwards Cummings put them ahead, slotting the ball low into the left hand corner with their first chance of the game. Commentator Gary Bennett said the ball should never have got into our box and that we'd created similar chances but the final ball had usually been poor. We seemed to be going downhill with passes going astray and frustration setting in resulting in Lynch being yellow-carded. The commentary cut out just before our best effort of the half – a powerful shot from Maguire that came back off the post apparently. We started putting more pressure on as half-time approached but couldn't create a real chance and it remained 0-1 as the whistle went. So far, so deflating but there was still plenty of time and I looked forward to the introduction of McNulty.
We started off brightly in the second-half but a good challenge from Hume saved our bacon six minutes in. Maguire had a good effort that was palmed away by O'Leary in goal and Gary Bennett said we were, “Knocking on the door.” As McNulty came on for the tired-sounding Watmore on the hour I hoped he'd open it, a couple of times preferably. Despite his recent couple of goals, Grigg seemed to have slipped back into not getting on to the end of good cross-balls, though I hoped he'd prove me wrong. Bennett suggested that parky might decide to throw on Kimpioka and with just over twenty minutes to go that sounded a good idea to me. The minutes were ticking away too rapidly and Parky was taking his time making a second substitution. Once again a draw seemed a decent result to hope for as we approached the eightieth minute. O'Nien had a header that O'Leary turned onto the post and away and next thing Kimpioka replaced Grigg, rather late in the day I thought. O'Leary then tipped a Power piledriver up off the bar for a corner. A Maguire shot went just past the foot of the post and then there were just three minutes left. We kept pressing but couldn't make anything count and it ended 0-1.
Despite having dominant spells, poor passing and finishing cost us the game whereas Shrewsbury were able to capitalize on what was their only real chance.
