Shropshire Star

Shrewsbury Town's Sam Ricketts unhappy with sloppy goals

New manager Sam Ricketts believes Saturday’s last-gasp surrender of victory to high-flying Peterborough was ‘two steps forward, one back’ for Shrewsbury Town.

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Town picked up their first League One point under Ricketts and it could have been all three but for switching off from a Peterborough corner in added time.

Goals from Salop stars Greg Docherty and Fejiri Okenabirhie had put the hosts in an exciting position against Steve Evans’ promotion contenders.

But Ricketts bemoaned the sloppy goals conceded by his side in the 2-2 draw, despite being relatively pleased with the performance level as his wait for a first league win goes on.

The Town boss said: “I’m happy with the display. I’m not delighted because I think there’s more to come from us, but I’m happy.

“They pushed us right to injury time to get back in and they’re right at the top of the table. You can see their attacking threat, they’ve got some real talent going forward.

“If they’d scored an excellent goal you have to hold your hands up and say fair play but we’ve given them two fairly soft goals, that’s a bit disappointing when we’ve worked so hard to score ours.

“It’s one of those things. Football is a never ending game, it never stops evolving. Just when you think you’ve cracked it, you haven’t.

“You have to keep going around in a circle, nearly, and make sure you’re covering all basis. It was probably two steps forward one back for us.”

Town remain 17th in League One ahead of Saturday’s visit of out-of-sorts Coventry, who are 13th but without a win in eight games.

To add salt into Town wounds on Saturday, Ricketts lost influential attacker Shaun Whalley to another muscle injury.

Whalley, who has recently returned from six-and-a-half weeks out with a calf injury, lasted just 25 minutes from the bench before limping off with a hamstring complaint.