00:00Salop fans, welcome to Shropsystar.com. My name is Geoffrey. I'm here with Salop correspondent
00:12Oli Westbury. After Shrewsbury have taken a bit of a heavy pre-season defeat, they lost
00:185-2 to Bolton. Ends their 100% pre-season record. Oli, you cannot read too much into
00:27pre-season results. I'm sure a lot of Salop fans thought they were going to waltz the league
00:31after winning all their pre-season games tonight. A little bit of a reality check. Can't read
00:37too much into it, but I would say plenty of work for Salop and Michael Appleton to still
00:43work on before the start of the season. Yeah, I think I wrote at half-time the bubble
00:47had been burst. Maybe that's perhaps a bit of an over-exaggeration. It wasn't a great
00:52first half, was it? I mean, Shrewsbury were kind of, I mean, Bolton were just much better,
00:58weren't they? And, you know, Shrewsbury aren't a league one side anymore, but I suppose I
01:02remember back to the game, which was obviously Shrewsbury against Bolton here in the league
01:08last season. And Shrewsbury were very competitive in that game. And at one stage it was 1-1,
01:13I think, with like 20 minutes to go. So you look back and think, but yeah, it wasn't an
01:18ideal first half. Obviously Shrewsbury had only conceded one goal up to this point in
01:24pre-season, but it wasn't quite to be today. The thing is, 3-0 at half-time probably was
01:30a little bit, you know, could have been more. They did have some other chances. Joel Randall
01:35kind of hit one over the bar where they should have scored. They should have scored before
01:39they got the opener. So I suppose it just felt like a bit of a, you know, a rusty first half
01:44performance really from town. And then after the break they kind of got one back through
01:50Callum Stewart and then kind of a fairly unlucky home goal. I find like home goals at a near
01:56post when you're trying to clear it are fairly unfortunate, aren't they? And then maybe a
02:00poor fifth goal to concede before Will Gray kind of taps one home at the end. It's a really
02:06difficult balance. I hate pre-season, so do you. It's a bizarre situation to be in because
02:12you can't judge them after the league. You know, you've got, you know, you can't judge
02:19them after beating Kiddie and I don't think you can judge them after losing to Bolton.
02:24I feel like we need to give this team a chance in league football, a chance to develop and
02:29then we can kind of go from there. So, you know, no overreactions really from this evening.
02:34Some positives, some good things, some bad things, some things that I'm sure that Shrewsby
02:38would like to do better. It'd be interesting to get, obviously we've spoken to Sam
02:42Lucas post-match, but it would have been interesting to get Michael Afton's take
02:46on the performance.
02:46Yeah, well that was going to be my next question. How do you think he was, will have kind of,
02:50you know, you've spoken to him I think a couple of times in pre-season. Now, how do you think
02:53he'll be feeling, you know, after, what's that, four or five pre-season games now, you know,
02:57he's got new signings through the door, you know, Salah fans I'm sure would like to see
03:01more, you know. What do you think he's feeling about the summer? Obviously, you know, on the
03:06record he's going to be positive, but do you think he will genuinely be happy with what
03:10he's seen from his players and what he's got done this summer so far?
03:14I think it's an interesting one with Afton because he's not bothered about, he'll say
03:20what he thinks, you know, and he came out after Telford last week in the last 20 minutes
03:24and he tore strips off him. He was really angry with that second half performance against
03:28Telford. So, it would have been interesting to get his thoughts on the kind of the first
03:36half, or just the game in general really. I think ultimately they've played five games,
03:40won four of them, you know, I think that's a pretty positive, you can't grumble about
03:46that too much, can you? It's a pretty decent showing and it's all about how they get on
03:53that first game this season against Bromley, you know, that's what we're all, that's what
03:56we're all here for, we're all here for that for the first league game, we're all here to
04:00see how they get on in League Two. I think the recruitment has been decent, they've got
04:03a few injuries that I think they'd like to get Tom Sang back in the team, obviously Will
04:07Boyle not involved today. So yeah, there's a couple injuries knocking about George Lloyd
04:13obviously going off in the second half, so they have got a relatively small squad so that's
04:18not really something that's going to do them many favours if they pick up injuries, but
04:22you know, I think Shrewsbury are going to be competitive in League One, so you know fingers
04:27crossed that they can build from a positive pre-season despite a kind of disappointing
04:32result tonight and go from there.
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