Exeter 2 Shrewsbury 0 - Ollie Westbury analysis
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00:00It has been a pretty bleak and miserable day here for all the Shrewsbury Town fans that
00:06made the journey to St James' Park to watch their side take on Exeter in what was dubbed
00:12as a crucial relegation battle, a relegation six-pointer, that word that's been used so
00:17many times, a word that Shrewsbury Town head coach Gareth Ainsworth does not like, but
00:21unfortunately the tone is pretty sombre after Shrewsbury produced one of the worst displays
00:26of the season, which was rightly called out by their head coach after the game as simply
00:30not good enough, and they come away with defeat, a defeat that pretty much leaves them, you
00:36know, their fate is now pretty inevitable that they're going to be playing league two
00:41football next season. It's an 11-point gap, it's just 10 games remaining and while Gareth
00:46Ainsworth will never give up because he is that kind of a person, Shrewsbury's position
00:50is pretty demoralising and pretty bleak. Town have just not managed to build on what
00:57was a successful kind of January and Christmas period where they closed the gap, I mean at
01:01one stage they were within touching distance of managing to get out of the bottom four,
01:06but that has not developed the way that they would have liked it to, and they now find
01:11themselves in a right old pickle with 10 games of the league one season to go. There's plenty
01:16of pride still at stake because of course Shrewsbury are not going to want to have five
01:20dead rubbers at the end of the season, but the way that it's going at the moment it could
01:24be over sooner rather than later if they keep performing like this. Today it started, Jamal
01:30Blackman saved a brilliant penalty which was probably quite soft, given away by Josh Feeney,
01:35slight nudge in the back, was there enough for a penalty kick? Most fans seem to disagree,
01:39I'd need to see a proper replay, a good quality replay to have a proper opinion. Anyway, Jamal
01:46Blackman saved that penalty, but it was absolutely criminal that 30 seconds later they managed
01:51to concede anyway when they failed to clear a corner, it was a nice cute header from Caleb
01:56Watts to convert it into the far corner of the net, and Shrewsbury then trailed. What
02:02you don't want to do after that is concede a goal very soon after the interval, but within
02:07three minutes they felt the advantage was doubled by the home side when Dimitri Mitchell
02:13produced a quite outstanding left-footed volley, it was a great finish, but again another set
02:18piece that Shrewsbury had done by and then it becomes a very, very long day from there.
02:22Gareth Ainsworth post-match, as tough as I've seen him, as frustrated as I've seen him during
02:27his tenure in Shropshire so far, he was visibly annoyed and angry by this display from his
02:35players and he said, as you can read on the Shropshire Star, there were some home truths
02:39said in that dressing room at full-time, he was not the happy bunny whatsoever and you
02:45know he will protect his players if he thinks his players are giving 100%, but he was disappointed
02:50with the fight that was showed by his Shrewsbury team, they just did not win the physical battle
02:56and that's some really, really bad, from a professional's perspective, that is not the
03:02kind of criticism that you want coming your way, given a game that's so big in the context
03:08of the season that Shrewsbury are desperate to try and get a result out of, but that was
03:12a very, very bad day at the office indeed. All your reaction will be on ShropshireStar.com
03:16but it feels like one of those days that everybody just wants to forget about.