Michael Appleton admits Birmingham City can 'scare the life' out of Shrewsbury Town
For the second time this season Shrewsbury Town take on Blues with a new head coach in the dugout
Michael Appleton will try not to ‘scare the life’ out of his Shrewsbury Town players and instead remind them they have already beaten Birmingham City once this season.
The Shrews travel to St Andrew’s @Knighthead Park on Saturday (3pm) looking for their first win in nine games – and aiming to aid their almost forlorn battle against relegation by becoming the first League One team to win at Blues.
Bizarrely they will not only be looking to do the double but take on the runaway leaders with a new manager in the dug-out, just as they did when Gareth Ainsworth was their newly-appointed boss in November.
Shrewsbury rode the new-manager bounce all the way to a surprise 3-2 victory that day – but it proved to be a false dawn and they are now 14 points adrift of safety at the bottom of the table.
Former Lincoln and Charlton boss Appleton knows the odds are stacked heavily against him.
“It's one of them where I can't start thinking too far ahead - Birmingham on Saturday doesn't get any harder,” he told the Shrewsbury Town website.
“Eight wins on the spin at home, 19 unbeaten, I can read them off loads of stats if you want, but I think that'd scare the life out of players if we give them too much of that.
“I think we've got to just make sure that we take them on and make sure that we give them the game they're probably going to expect having a new manager on the side of the pitch.
“People talk about the bounce, and hopefully we will get that. I’ll remind the players that they've done it before, albeit our home stadium, a little bit different, but they're capable of beating them.
“The reality is clean sheets win you games, obviously your goal scorers put the icing on the cake.
"But at the same time, I think sometimes if you sit out just to try and defend, defend, defend and keep clean sheets, you don't really have anything else at the top end of the pitch and it's never been massively my forte.”
Blues go into the game hoping to put the finishing touches to their promotion campaign sooner rather than later and with the prospect of a league and cup double in the offing.