Shrews boss has no time for moaners
SHREWSBURY Town manager Paul Hurst has ‘little sympathy’ with David Moyes over West Ham’s fixture schedule and said complaints about congestion made him ‘smirk’.
Moyes takes his team to New Meadow tomorrow having faced Tottenham on Thursday night, and plans to field a weakened team with the Premier League a priority.
But Hurst views the contest as a chance for Shrewsbury, who famously knocked out Moyes’s Everton in 2003, to demonstrate the remarkable form that has taken them to second in League One, having started the season as relegation candidates.
‘I see this as something as a reward for the players and the club as a whole,’ said Hurst. ‘It helps financially and all the fans can come out in force.
‘I don’t see it as a distraction or anything. The priority is the league but we will put our team out. I do smile when I hear people moaning about these games. They haven’t played on pitches like we have and they have all the resources in the world to get the players back fresh and ready.
‘It makes me smirk. I’ve not got too much sympathy with them for the schedule ahead of our game.’
Moyes refers to that third-round loss at the old Gay Meadow as his ‘darkest night’ in football.
An Everton team featuring David Unsworth, Thomas Gravesen and Wayne Rooney lost 2-1 to a Shrewsbury side managed by former Everton captain Kevin Ratcliffe.
They languished 80 places below Everton in the lower reaches of the old Third Division. ‘I have got to say it was certainly one of the darkest nights,’ Moyes said. ‘When I talk about my disappointments in football, it was when I lost at Shrewsbury with Everton a long, long time ago.’
Moyes has experienced happier times at Shrewsbury, where he was a player for three years between 1987 and 1990. ‘I have great memories,’ he added. ‘I went there and there were quite a lot of Scottish boys there at the time. When I joined we were in what is now the Championship.’
There will also be a return for West Ham goalkeeper Joe Hart, who emerged through the Shrewsbury youth system.