Steve Cotterill upbeat after Shrews maintain their winning momentum

Posted Sunday, March 27, 2022 by PA

Shrewsbury manager Steve Cotterill liked what he saw from his side in the 1-0 win over Lincoln in Sky Bet League One.

Daniel Udoh’s 84th-minute winner made it three consecutive wins for Shrewsbury on a sunny Shropshire afternoon.

The Shrews attacker reacted quickly to a loose ball on the edge of the box and rifled a shot into the bottom corner.

Earlier in the match, Udoh had been involved in a collision with Lincoln defender Adam Jackson, who was forced off on a stretcher after 24 minutes. Jackson had also been carried off following a collision in the reverse fixture at the LNER Stadium.

Asked what he could say about Udoh, Cotterill said: “Probably nothing that I haven’t already said!”

“He’s just a wonderful boy. He’ll get all the plaudits today because he’s the one who actually scored the goal in the game but there were lots of other lads and he’ll be the first to recognise the other boys.

“It would have been easy at half-time to have taken Dan off. I thought we could have taken five or six of our lads off today because we needed to be a little hit sharper. Sometimes that happens. Why that has happened today, I have no idea.”

He continued: “We’ve had three wins in a row but, at the beginning of the season, while everything was forming, we had something like two wins in 12 or three wins in 14.

“I suppose it’s a measure of how far we’ve come this season, when it has been a real transitional period at the football club.”

Lincoln boss Michael Appleton was disappointed with the result but he was happy to report that Jackson seems to have responded well after the head injury.

Appleton said: “From a precautionary point of view, we have to get him off the pitch because of what has happened previously.

“What I would say is that, at half-time, he was ticking all the boxes from a medical point of view. He was ticking all those boxes in positive situations.

“I don’t know the exact state of [the concussion] protocol but the lads will monitor him over the weekend and we’ll see what he’s like during the week.

“The ball almost sort of stopped dead on him. He looked comfortable, he looked favourite all day long and, to be fair, you look back and the goalscorer never really attempted to win the ball. It looked a bit naughty on the replay.”

Appleton also bemoaned a match where he felt his team lacked the luck of the decisions, adding. “There were a lot of things that didn’t go our way.”