Steve Cotterill applauds Shrewsbury’s application in victory at leaders Hull

Steve Cotterill praised his team for putting in “an incredible shift” after Shrewsbury won 1-0 at Sky Bet League One leaders Hull.

Town remain in the relegation zone but Charlie Daniels’ 27th-minute goal earned the visitors their first victory in 11 league games.

Cotterill, who replaced Sam Ricketts as Shrewsbury boss in late November, said: “We were looking forward to the game.

“The blank week we had helped and it was a really good performance from the boys. When a team hasn’t won for a long time you start thinking, ‘Are we going to ever win again?’.

“But not only do goals change games, they change mindsets and, thankfully, we got our noses in front.

“I thought we defended brilliantly and it’s all credit to the lads because they’ve put in an incredible shift.”

Despite their lowly position, Shrewsbury were outstanding.

Hull had no response to their opponents’ high-pressing energy and fell behind when Daniels lofted the ball over goalkeeper Matt Ingram inside the penalty box.

Town also skimmed a post 11 minutes earlier following Oliver Norburn’s deflected drive from long range.

By contrast to the visitors, City were short of inspiration all game and did not deserve to equalise.

Cotterill said: “To restrict Hull to no shots on target is quite an achievement.

“I also think there were some golden opportunities to add to the one goal we scored.

“It’s been a whirlwind two weeks and there hasn’t been any time to take a deep breath, but there’s been a lot of work that’s gone on since I’ve come in through the door.

“There’ll be bumps in the road – we are far from the finished article – and we’re still down in the part of the league we don’t want to be.

“We can enjoy this, but we’re back at work on Monday and have got another incredible tough game against Lincoln on Tuesday.”

Hull head coach Grant McCann has called on his players to respond in the right way at Blackpool on Tuesday.

He said: “We weren’t good and probably struggled the whole game.

“We just didn’t test their keeper, which is really frustrating because we’ve been good on that front. We just didn’t do it, and ultimately we paid the price – we didn’t look threatening.

“In the second half there was a good reaction from the group but they made it hard for us to break them down. We just didn’t get going – it was scruffy.

“We’re not going to win every game this season. The group have done really well in terms of responding and we’re going to have to do it again.”

McCann added: “We probably didn’t deserve anything from the game.

“Teams are going to give us different things to work out, but it was a day for us to forget.

“We’ve got to see who is fresh and ready to go for Blackpool. We’ll pick a team that’s right to go and try to get a result.”