OPPOSITION
It has been a strange sort of season for Shrewsbury Town. They started the season as one of the favourites to push for promotion, and for some parts of the first half of the season they looked like living up to their billing. However, since Christmas, Town have struggled and are on one of the worst runs of form in the division, and sliding towards a relegation fight.
The Shrews started the season at their new home, the "New Meadow", after 97 years at the Club's famous Gay Meadow stadium, right in the town centre. The opening of the "New Meadow" helped to fuel optimism about the season ahead, even if most people who have since visited will tell you it is a plastic, soulless, flat pack stadium which is impossible to get to!!!
On 3rd March, the recent run of bad form, which had seen Town fall from 9th to 16th in the table, cost Gary Peters his job as the Club's Manager. Peters had been manager since late 2004, and was one of the longest serving managers in the Football League until his departure.
The new man Paul Simpson has a great track record. He took Carlisle back into the Football League after their one season in the Conference, and then took them a division higher with back to back promotions. He then moved on to Preston North End where he took the Lancashire side to 7th place in the Championship. However, a bad start to this season saw him leave the Club, and he took over at Shrewsbury on 12th March.
The Shrewsbury attack will be led by Dave Hibbert who has 12 League goals to his name so far this season. In goal will be the experienced Glyn Garner.
PAST MEETINGS
The side have met 3 times before in competitive games. The first of these was early in the 2003/2004 season, Town's one season in the Conference. Despite a battling performance at Gay Meadow, the Daggers came away on the wrong end of a 2-1 scoreline. However, the tables were well and truly turned in the return fixture at Dagenham early in 2004. The home side produced their best performance of a frustrating season to defeat the eventual play off winners by 5-0. Chris Moore helped himself to two wonderful goals on a memorable afternoon.
The third meeting was this season's game at the "New Meadow" in December. The game was tightly balanced at 0-0 until the Daggers were reduced to 10 men with the sending off of Solomon Taiwo early in the second half. From then on it was one way traffic and goals from Marc Pugh, Marc Tierney and Ben Davies (2) gave the home side a 4-0 win.
CROWD
Hard to tell what the crowd will be for this one. The Macclesfield game apart, home support has been good of late, and with West Ham being away this could continue. Shrewsbury appear to get good support away from home, and their "exiles" should be out in force due to our location. Therefore I would estimate the total crowd to be around 2,000, with around 400 travelling Shrews fans.
UD ATTENDANCE
With the pre-season cricket tour of Barbados now well and truly over, numbers should be high once again, with no excuses given as yet for non attendance!!
PREDICTION
Is a tough one to call!!! The Daggers have been poor in their last two games, but the 6 before that they put in impressive performances, and have raised their game for big games earlier in the season as well. Town are obviously struggling, and are sliding towards the bottom of the table. New boss Simpson will be desperate to try and halt that slide in his first away game.
However, confidence will be low in the Town camp and I expect the Daggers to capitalise on that and gain a 2-1 victory. PREVIOUS MATCHES |
