Shrewsbury Town heading off to Portugal pre-season training camp

Boss Sam Ricketts wants his Town squad ‘living on top of each other’ during their trip, which will include training each day and an informal practice match.

The club will spend seven nights on the continent between Sunday, July 7 and July 14, by which time Ricketts hopes to have completed most of his transfer business.

It is the third consecutive year that Shrewsbury have been away in Portugal, having also been out there under Paul Hurst and John Askey.

Ricketts said: “We’re planning the six-week period and within that will be a week in Portugal.

“Hopefully we’ll have the vast majority of the squad assembled by then, so it will be a good exercise.

“It’ll be seven days warm climate training but it’s also getting the players together and living on top of each other for seven days.”

The Town chief feels it is an opportunity to grow a togetherness in the Town ranks that will serve them well throughout the season.

“It’s trying to build relationships between the players, the togetherness that comes when you spend a lot of time with each other,” he added.

“We’ll train here but the difference is when the players finish they go home. But in Portugal they will go to the hotel with team-mates.

“They’ll be talking about the session, or what they’re watching on TV, or family, or games, whatever. You build up connections between players and try to promote that, because you’re bringing strangers together and you want them to unify as quickly as they can.”

The training sessions will be intense but Town will offer players down time in a bid for them to gel away from football.

“There’ll be bits that try to foster that team spirit, there are many different ways of doing it and we’ll try to get as much covered as we can – and do that in this country as well,” he added.

“We’ll have a game of some sort. Not a stereotypical two 45 minutes, probably more training ground game, maybe 15 minute blocks or maybe not a 90 minutes, it may be shorter or longer. It will be a relaxed and informal game.”

The club are still to confirm who their opponents will be for the warm-up match.

Shrewsbury return for pre-season on June 20 and will spend a couple of weeks training at Sundorne before jetting off.