The Importance Of Beating Shrewsbury

We all know the importance of the game at Portman Road tomorrow. Everyone is aware that anything other than victory might derail any hope of an automatic spot once and for all. Plymouth are at home to basement club Forest Green, and although strange things happen in this division every week, I cannot see the Pilgrims dropping any points here. It’s a perfect opportunity to dispel any jitters after that Barnsley result.

That means to sustain any interest in clawing our way back into the top two, only a win will do. A draw leaves us four points behind. A loss and we are back to square one. Our form at the moment is almost too good to be true so confidence will be high, but as manager Kieran McKenna alludes to often, we must retain some degree of humility.

What is often required is a fine balance between feeling superior and keeping our feet firmly on the ground. Thankfully, Mckenna is a realist. He knows was must not get above ourselves and instead, focus on the main objective, which is to win at all costs.

The Shrews are certainly no pushovers, and this might just aid our cause. We have dropped a lot of our points at home to sides that we would have expected to have beaten comfortably. It has not happened recently of course, but McKenna will not easily forget Cheltenham, Fleetwood, or indeed Lincoln City, and nor will we!

They were all teams struggling at the wrong end of the table, but mainly due to blanket defences and our profligacy in front of goal, instead of gaining nine points, we ended up with two! Let us hope that is all behind us now because it needs to be.

Shrewsbury Town have had a good season under Steve Cotterill, and find themselves in 9th place in the table, with 10 matches to play. More recently they drew 2-2 with Derby County away and beat Oxford United away, which is something we failed to do. The players to watch are Luke Leahy who is on 11 of the season, with Tom Bayliss and Christian Saydee both on 7.  And let’s not forget former Blues loanee Mathew Pennington, because he is on 6 goals already so they can find goals from everywhere.

They will come out looking for goals so this might work in our favour. They can be rather physical at times, so let’s hope Sam Morsy does not take the bait, as he only needs to avoid a card tomorrow to miss out on a 2 game ban, and I think he can do it.