Cooper’s waiting on Town decision
DEBUTANT Adam Reach grabbed an early goal before Tom Bradshaw came off the bench to add a late second to seal Shrewsbury’s first win of the season and leave Swindon caretaker manager Mark Cooper admitting the result did his hopes of the permanent position few favours.
Cooper, the former Peterborough and Kettering boss, expects to find out early next week if he will land the Robins job on a permanent basis.
But his side's performance at the Greenhous Meadow did little to aid his cause.
“I've got a meeting with the chairman and owners on Monday morning where it will be sorted out,” said Cooper, who had led Swindon to two wins from their opening three games.
“Sometimes you had to grind it out and win your personal battles.We lost too many of those.
“We needed to show a bit of urgency and we played like a charity match.We kept the ball at times but it was like a charity game and I could have played in it.”
Confronted by a lively Shrewsbury side, the visitors never seriously looked capable of extending that bright run.
It took just ten minutes for Reach, snapped up on a month's loan from Middlesbrough, to open his account in a Shrewsbury shirt. After robbing defender Grant Hall on the halfway line, the impresssive England under-20 international powered forward before firing past advancing keeper Wes Foderingham.
“It was a good goal and he might have had another one,” said Shrewsbury boss Graham Turner.
“He can score goals and I think he's scored goals on his debuts wherever he's been. I thought the performance deserved the win.
“We should have scored more goals but the overall impression was one that we had a good shape, we worked hard, we knew what we were about and we deserved it.”
Shrewsbury could have won by a bigger margin. Reach was unfortunate to see a looping header drift just over a minute after his goal, and he also had a smart effort smothered well by Foderingham in the second half.
New signing Nile Ranger was introduced by Cooper to try and engineer an equaliser but instead it was Bradshaw, sent on by Turner, who wrapped up the points five minutes from time.
Bradshaw, 21, had not scored since grabbing the winner win against Accrington in October 2011, but that drought was brought to an end when he showed real composure inside the box to fire in hard and low. To comment on this match go to http://boards.footymad.net/