Paul Simpson has urged skipper Ben Davies to recapture his match sharpness as he considers an immediate recall for the midfielder against his former club Chester City on Saturday.
Davies was left out of the Town side who battled their way to a goalless draw at Bradford last weekend but will be be hoping to feature against his old team-mates as Shrewsbury bid to stay on course for promotion without suspended hitman Grant Holt.
Davies’s exciting form in the early months of the season marked him out as one of the top talents in League Two but the nine-goal midfielder has struggled to hit the same heights since returning from a double hernia operation in November.
But Simpson revealed Davies had reacted positively to being left out at Valley Parade as he targets an instant return for Saturday’s Prostar derby clash.
“I wouldn’t have expected anything different from Ben – his attitude’s been spot on,” said Simpson. “I don’t foresee there being a problem with him. It’s just a case of him knuckling down and working hard to make sure he gets himself back in soon.”
Aware that Davies would love to return against his old Chester team-mates, Simpson added: “The sentimental side won’t come into it. It’s about picking a side that’s right. He’s not the first captain to be left out and I’m sure he won’t be the last.
“It’s up to him to keep going and try and get himself back to the levels he was at before he had the operation.
“It’s maybe match sharpness that he’s not quite got at the moment, that’s the thing that he’s lost. I don’t think he lost his level of fitness while he was out, but that sharpness has gone away a little bit and it’s something that he’s got to try and get back as soon as he can.”
Simpson has plenty to ponder ahead of the clash with lowly Chester, with ex-England defender Mark Wright back at the helm of the Deva Stadium club for a third spell.
The Town boss’s main task is trying to replace banned top scorer Holt who will miss the next two matches after collecting his 10th yellow card of the season last weekend. No Town player other than Holt has scored in the last seven games.
“He’s going to be a big loss for us but this is part and parcel of it and we’ve just got to accept it,” said Simpson. “I’ve been saying for weeks now that we need other players to chip in with goals.
“Nobody can look to Grant to be the one who’s going to score for the next two games, somebody else has to go and grab hold of it and do something about the situation.”
Simpson, disappointed to lose the services of midfielder Joss Labadie, his latest loan capture, to a broken foot after just one game, confirmed he was still on the trail of reinforcements.
“Whether we get anybody in this week, I don’t really know,” he said. “Joss is a player I had been looking at for quite a while. There are other players out there who I have identified.
“We’ve just got to keep looking round and make sure they’re the right people. I don’t want to bring people in for the sake of it. I want them to be right.
“If we don’t get anybody in for the weekend I’m still confident we’ve got enough in our squad already to be able to go and cope with a game against Chester.”
That’s not to say Simpson is taking the challenge of Chester lightly – far from it, highlighting the threat of the likes of 12-goal top scorer Ryan Lowe, the former Town player.
“It’s a game we’ve got to be very careful of,” he said. “I’m sure Bradford expected to beat Chester the other week and Chester got a really good 0-0 draw there.
“We’ve got to be careful we don’t get carried away and start expecting results. We’ve got to go into it and make sure we earn the result.”
Simpson added there had been no interest in any of the fringe players he’s keen to offload: “There are a number of players I would be prepared to let go, players who are not involved in the 16 on a regular basis. I’m waiting for enquiries.”
But he reacted with bemusement to ongoing rumours that Leeds United are interested in signing his top scorer Holt.
“I’ve never heard a single thing officially about it,” he said. “That was even coming up before Gary McAllister got the sack and now it’s a new manager and it’s still going.
“I know nothing about any of these rumours. All I can say is that I haven’t had any enquiries for somebody to come in and buy any of our players.”
