Town defender Darren Jones spoke to his club's official website ahead of his side's League One match against Carlisle at Brunton Park on Good Friday afternoon, Jones bemoaning the state of the recent weather in Shropshire:
“We haven’t done a great deal of training this week for Carlisle because of the snow, but you just try to do what you can with the facilities we have got. I thought they were pretty decent when they were down here to be honest, they worked hard but it is a game where we can go up there and win. I think we can go above them if we win, so that makes another team below us. But, we will just play our game, be confident, and I am sure we can at least get a point up there.
“Some teams around us have played and not got any points, so that has given us some confidence and it eases the pressure a bit. But, we have still got to play Carlisle, Colchester, Portsmouth and Oldham so I think if we can get points out of those games then we should be fine. We just need to beat Oldham really, I think if we can beat them then we should be alright. I can’t see Scunthorpe winning the majority of their games with them having some good teams to play.
“We knew it was going to be tough in this league, but we knew staying up was easily achievable. OK, things haven’t gone the way we would have liked them to have gone, we didn’t want to be struggling at this time of year but that is what it is. It is about surviving this season and then building for next. I think next season with a couple of new faces in and everybody having an idea of what this league is about then we can take the experience on and do better.”
Meanwhile Shrews manager Graham Turner commented to his club's official website:
“Carlisle are not far away from us in the table, so they haven’t had the best of seasons. Therefore we have got to take the optimistic view that they can’t be that good. Our two recent away performances, a win at MK Dons and a draw at Crewe were good, they were encouraging. So, if we take that into the game against Carlisle, which will be our third consecutive away match, with the confidence that has grown on the back of those two results then there is no reason at all why we shouldn’t go with a lot of optimism and ensure we get a good result.”
In team news for Town tomorrow they will have four players absent through injury, with three of those being centre-halves in Rob Edwards, Cameron Gayle and Jermaine Grandison. Barnsley-loanee Edwards sidelined with a thigh problem while another temporary transfer man is West Brom’s Gayle who is out with a torn hamstring, Grandison meanwhile having just returned to training following a hip injury. That rehabilitation stage also being the case for winger Mark Wright who has been out longer-term with knee ligament problems.
The Salop outfit have made an effort to compensate for those absentees then by signing two players this afternoon on emergency loan transfer deadline day ahead of the end of season run-in. Town picking up, until the end of the campaign, 20-year old Dutch striker Akwasi Asante from Birmingham City and right-back James Hurst, 21, from West Bromwich Albion, Hurst having previously spent six weeks on loan at the Greenhous Meadow last season.
The referee for tomorrow's match is Mark Haywood from Wakefield in West Yorkshire and he will be assisted down the lines by two Lancashire FA men in Barry Cropp from Lytham St Annes and Nick Greenhalgh from Bury. Meanwhile the fourth official is another red rose man as it is Simeon Lucas from Darwen.