Gavin Cowan: Shrewsbury players are buying into my ideas

Gavin Cowan believes his Shrewsbury players are buying into his ideas after their impressive 3-1 win over Swindon.

Iwan Morgan gave relegation-threatened Shrewsbury an early lead before they were pegged back by Billy Kirkman’s equaliser.

But the hosts upset the odds with second-half goals from George Lloyd and Nick Freeman earning Salop back-to-back wins.

“Full credit to the players, they were outstanding from start to finish,” said Shrewsbury boss Cowan.

“It’s the culmination of just over two weeks of hard work. The lads really bought into the game-strategy that we wanted to implement and I’m really proud of them.

“You live and die by your players. They have to buy into what you want to do.

“We are at that point now where we set a minimum requirement of what is expected from the players, in and out of possession, in all three phases of the pitch.

“They rely on us for a game plan and strategy and we rely on them to go out and create energy and intensity like they did today.

“The equaliser took the zip out of the players a bit, but there’s no time for disappointment.

“We tried to flip it on its head, it was disappointing but we don’t want to go with that narrative.

“You are in control of your own destiny and we reminded the players of that at half-time.

“I was really pleased they were able to maintain their professionalism. We remained really cool, calm and calculated and stuck to our task.”

Swindon head coach Ian Holloway admitted his side had got what they deserved.

“Going behind was the biggest problem,” he said. “Shrewsbury have a pretty good home defensive record and when they get in front they are very difficult to break down.

“We warned the players about the set-piece game and what Shrewsbury do and how they get their goals – and they got two out of their three from set-pieces.

“It is disappointing from my team. A lot of their players played eight or nine out of 10 today and my team didn’t.

“We didn’t cut them open like we can do. It was just one of those games. Sometimes your team doesn’t play how you want to and mine didn’t play very well today, it wasn’t for the want of trying.

“They were the better team and you wouldn’t have known who is at the top end and who is at the bottom.

“We didn’t look like we had that drive and sometimes that’s the way it is. We have to dust ourselves down for another important away game on Tuesday.

“We have to see what we can do in the next one and get another run going.”