00:00 Hello Salah fans, welcome to ShropshireStart.com. My name is Jonny Drew. I'm here at the Crowd
00:12 Meadow alongside your Salah correspondent Oli Westbury after Paul Verhurst has just
00:16 been unveiled as the new Shrewsbury Town Manager for the second time. He was here, Oli, alongside
00:22 Director of Football Mickey Moore, answered an awful lot of questions about his, well,
00:27 it's probably the worst kept secret in the region for the last couple of days that Paul
00:31 Verhurst was going to return to the Crowd Meadow. Just your general reaction to what
00:36 he had to say? Obviously all positive, a lot of positive reaction from the supporters and
00:40 it looks like an appointment that's going to potentially galvanise the fan base. Yeah,
00:45 yeah, he kind of left this room. He was sat in that chair, you can see, over my right
00:49 shoulder and he left this room probably about 20 minutes ago. I asked him an awful lot of
00:55 questions. I felt bad at one stage because I thought I'd just keep going, keep going,
00:59 keep going. But kind of got lots of stories now over the next couple of days over different
01:03 styles, different kinds of stuff from formations to recruitment to kind of what his role entails,
01:11 kind of the relationship between him and Mickey Moore. So lots and lots of stuff to come.
01:15 As a general, I thought he spoke pretty well. But I think one thing that we do find about
01:20 these unveilings, and he did say it himself actually, but the proof is in the pudding,
01:26 isn't it? We've been to several unveilings where managers have come across really well,
01:31 they've spoke really well, they've been really, really articulate and that is all you can
01:34 really be. You can speak well, but actually we'll have to wait and see how the team goes
01:40 and that's nothing against Paul Verhurst. That's just manager unveilings in the past.
01:45 I mean, I can remember when myself and you went to the Steve Bruce one, didn't we? And
01:49 he was...
01:50 What time was that?
01:51 Well, we went out of that one thinking, oh, he was absolutely brilliant and he turned
01:53 out to be, well, we know how he turned out to be. So that's kind of where we're kind
02:00 of at really. But he said a lot of things, there's lots and lots of interesting stuff
02:04 in there. Obviously, we sat alongside Mickey Moore and there was kind of quite a few questions
02:09 asked of him as well, mainly by me. So, yeah, lots and lots of interesting stuff to come
02:15 out of the next few days.
02:16 Yeah, he's returning to the club, I think it's six years since he departed, six years
02:20 since he guided us up on that incredible season where they almost got to the Championship
02:26 and then there was that sort of acrimonious departure to Ipswich. But he spoke an awful
02:31 lot about, ever since he left, he always had a desire to return. He spoke very highly of
02:35 the chairman. Now, I know his relationship with the former Chief Executive, Brian Caldwell,
02:40 was pretty frosty at the end, but he spoke very highly of Rowland Whitchurch. I think
02:43 the quote he used, you can see it on the shop, he kind of owes the chairman, he always wanted
02:47 to come back. And he did address that departure as well. It's a case of, like you say, proof
02:53 in the pudding, but he was saying all the right things. I think he was pretty honest
02:56 and pretty genuine in the way he spoke about it.
02:58 Yeah, no, absolutely. I think he was pretty honest, I think he was pretty genuine. He
03:03 didn't shy away from it. He was asked quite a lot of things. Obviously, he was asked about
03:06 his departure and I think I said to him, obviously, probably the majority of fans are absolutely
03:11 over the moon to see you back. But obviously, there's a minority that are still sceptical
03:15 based on the way that you left to go to Ipswich and what would your message be to those fans.
03:24 I can't actually remember what he said because I asked him so many damn questions. I can't
03:28 remember what he said. I'm going to have to go and listen back to my dictaphone.
03:31 I think he basically said that he understood, but then he feels that the majority of people
03:35 will understand why he left. Obviously, he went to go and take a Championship job that
03:39 obviously didn't pan out, but it's come full circle now and he is back at Shrewsbury. What
03:45 he talked about as well, Oli, as well as all the niceties of coming back and always having
03:49 that desire to come back and now he's had the chance to return to the crowd. He also
03:53 talked about fans, there's not many days left in the January chance window, but fans want
03:58 to hear about that. They are hopeful of faces through the door between now and the 1st of
04:03 February when the deadline ends. The clock is ticking, but I think Hurst is also hopeful
04:08 of maybe two, three, even four players through the door, hopefully, if they can get things
04:13 done.
04:14 It's very difficult in this scenario because obviously you ask the questions, but you don't
04:17 always get the straight answers. That's nothing against Paul Hurst or Mickey Moore in this
04:21 scenario, but Paul Hurst hasn't taken a training session. He has watched the players, he can
04:25 say that, he's watched games, watched a lot of past games, so he's aware, but he's not
04:31 taken a training session, doesn't know what he's got to work with. So he needs to have
04:36 a look, but they need to do that really quickly before then figuring out how they're going
04:42 to best go about it.
04:44 It's a question that you have to ask, but probably if you're going to get the answer
04:49 that you want at the moment, he said that he does hope that they will be able to do
04:53 some business, but how much business they will be able to do at this moment in time,
04:57 it's probably hard for them to actually... Because I said, how many players do you want,
05:02 what positions do you want, and obviously he didn't really give too much away in that.
05:06 I mean, say two, three or four, that's quite a varying range. So we're just going to have
05:11 to wait and see, but he did speak well. He's cool, calm and collected, I would have said,
05:17 is the way that I would have described how he was.
05:19 There's a lot of stuff that he did say that will be on Tropstar.com and in the Tropstar
05:23 over the coming days, and from Mickey Moore as well, spoke about some really interesting
05:27 stuff. But another thing that he sort of addressed, and Mickey Moore did as well, they talked
05:30 about systems and formations, and we know when Matt Taylor came in, there was this sort
05:33 of blueprint of playing a 3-5-2 and a specific system, but Paul Hearst gives some very interesting
05:39 comments on that, of how he's played in recent years, at Grimsby and when he was at Shrewsbury
05:44 previously, and how he's going to try and turn things around.
05:48 Yeah, yeah, he did. He spoke quite a lot on, I asked him, I said, obviously, so far this
05:53 season we've played 3-5-2 or 3-4-3, those formations, and I wanted to kind of get where
05:59 he thinks he's at. But what he did say, he kind of kept his cards close to his chest,
06:04 I suppose, but said that, I think that you need to be able to be flexible. And when he
06:08 was at Grimsby, he did say that he kind of automated between different systems, which
06:12 I thought was a really interesting approach and an interesting answer.
06:17 So what formation are we going to see when we rock up at Northampton on Saturday? I'm
06:21 not, I couldn't, honest to God, at first I thought, he played 4 at the back last time,
06:26 so that's what we're going to see. But I'm not convinced by that, because he said that,
06:31 if everybody knows what formation you're going to play, then you're much easier to figure
06:34 out. So we're going to have to wait and see what they turn out at Northampton on the weekend.
06:40 There you go Salah fans, Paul Hearst back in the job for a second time and you can see
06:44 all the reaction from his unveiling on Shopstar.com
Comments