Shrews poor start of no concern to Jones

The Shrews are under new management in John Askey, who took over when Paul Hurst joined Ipswich in the summer, taking some key players with him too.

Under Askey, the Shrews are yet to win, with two draws and two defeats to their name, scoring just one goal in the process, but Jones said: “It’s only four games in.

“We’ve pretty much got similar points to what we had this time last year and we ended up second in the league.

“I’m not saying that’s going to happen, what I’m saying is it’s four games in, Shrewsbury have got a new manager, got a few new players, will take time to bed in.

“It’s a tough league, some people have tougher starts than others, at this point everyone has played two home games, two away games, so a lot of things happen.

“The table takes shape after about 10 games and then you start to see things taking shape, it’s early for anyone, ourselves included and Shrewsbury are no different.”

Town go into the game with an almost clean bill of health, missing just Alan McCormack and Luke Berry as Jones continued: “We’re pretty strong, obviously Macca’s still feeling the affects of what he did at Peterborough, but apart from that we’re in pretty good shape.

“It’s days rather than weeks, so we’re hoping that won’t be a big one.

“We’ve got a game on Monday, a behind closed doors game, Berry will feature in that, looking for him to get minutes and see how he reacts to that and once he reacts to that then we’ll see where he is.”

Meanwhile, when asked how the likes of Alan Sheehan, Marek Stech and James Collins had reacted to missing Tuesday night’s 2-0 win over Southend, Jones added: “We’ve only trained briefly and I wouldn’t say they were any different to what they normally are, I so wouldn’t say they were more positive than what they give me every day.

"It’s tough when you’ve been left out and the players who have been left out are used to playing lots of games for us and at other clubs.

"It’s a tough decision leaving big players out of your team, especially for an important game, but we felt it was right, we did it for the right reasons.

"We spoke to them beforehand, explained to them why, so it’s not a shock or a punishment, it’s just something we needed to do and thankfully it paid off.

"But we’re going to need those players, so they’re going to need to train well, going to need to be ready because very few spend masses of time out the team.”