Football Season Guide

Shrewsbury finished the last two seasons with 51 and 50 points respectively and only narrowly managed to beat the drop in each of them. It is therefore not difficult to see why Salop are widely seen as one of the main candidates to go down in what will be Paul Hurst's first full season in charge. Hurst did well to steady the ship and keep the Shrews out of the bottom three last time around but things were not as comfortable as they could have been as Shrewsbury looked set for a mid-table finish at one point, only to end up stuttering over the line. Having never had a lot of money to spend the Shrews were always known for their large turnover of players and their reliance on the loan market. However, loans are obviously no longer a weapon they can utilize as much as they did in the past due to rule changes that took place last season. As is usually the case with them, they once again parted ways with several players during the summer but it was really the case of Hurst making the squad his own. All of the players who left were either backups or significantly down the pecking order since he took over. At the same time the Shrews' transfer policy was always to search for diamonds in the rough and it is therefore unsurprising that they have brought in several unknown players on loan from Premier League and Championship clubs, although they did manage to sign a proven League One player in Jon Nolan who joins from Chesterfield. Player departures are unlikely to weaken the Shrews given the limited impact that the players who left had so if at least some of the new signings prove to be of the required quality they will be stronger than they were last time around. However, there is a big question mark over whether this will be enough for them to beat the drop, given that the league seems more balanced than it was last season, with no obvious candidates to go down.