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Sam Ricketts looks to the floor of the home dressing room at the Montgomery Waters Meadow and composes himself. A smile, a pause. “You f***ers,” the Shrewsbury Town manager says at full-time. “The game was there to be won and you just wanted to go to Anfield, didn’t you?”
Laughter breaks out and Jason Cummings, whose goals helped Shrewsbury to come from 2-0 down to earn a replay with world and European champions Liverpool, sticks his tongue out with glee. “It is all there for you now,” Ricketts, 38, says. “Enjoy it, well done, now let’s have some music.”
The soulful voice of Drake breaks out from the speakers as sports therapist Gregg Jones carries in bags of Nando’s chicken. Cummings puts his hands through his hair and poses for a selfie with the man of the match Josh Laurent. Shaun Whalley sits looking in awe at the red jersey he has just got from Roberto Firmino, a treasure from the day League One Shrewsbury defied the odds to draw with Jürgen Klopp’s mighty Liverpool, the runaway Premier League leaders.
Everything had gone against Ricketts. Before the game he had singled out captain Oliver Norburn for a crucial role in midfield. Within 20 minutes, Norburn was trudging off injured. At half-time, assistant Graham Barrow had ordered the team to concentrate and be focused. “It is the day for the f***ing brave,” Barrow boomed in his Lancashire tones. Twenty-seven seconds after the restart, Donald Love scored an own goal.
Yet all the plans and tactics Ricketts and his coaching staff had put in over the previous week eventually came to fruition. They had gathered at 9am on a dreary Saturday morning in Shropshire, 31 hours before kick-off. Ricketts, just 18 months into his managerial career, is joined by assistants Barrow and Dean Whitehead around a wooden table. They are assessing footage of the next day’s opponents on a screen in the corner of his office while analyst Tom Pike flicks through clips.
The mood is calm, the focus on handling Liverpool’s build-up play and Klopp’s famous press. They analyse Everton’s faults in the previous round, before picking out aspects of the approach Wolves, Sheffield United and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea took in stopping the Premier League leaders. “So we are playing five up front, are we?” Barrow, 65, asks with a wink.
Instead, the tactics board on the wall shows the changes to formation are not quite so drastic. Ricketts’s squad has been totally transformed in the past year, since he joined from Wrexham. He has spent less than £150,000, with a focus on signing players with a point to prove, such as Sean Goss, formerly of Manchester United’s academy, and Cummings, who played at Rangers when loaned out by his last club, Nottingham Forest.
Shrewsbury’s usual 3-4-3 will be altered to a 5-3-2 with Goss brought into a three-man midfield. Ricketts wants them to suffocate the space, aware of how lethal Liverpool can be with even a second-choice team.
“Wolves gave them big problems because they killed them in the middle,” Ricketts, the former defender, says. Ricketts was at Molineux on Thursday to see Liverpool’s narrow win, and throughout the day his phone pings with messages from friends at the Midlands club to discuss tactics. He points to the Wolves wing backs, Matt Doherty and Jonny, on the screen and notices their patience when Liverpool are on the ball. “They don’t rush out,” Ricketts says, and stresses the importance of right back Love and left back Scott Golbourne doing the same.
One final clip. Shrewsbury away at Oxford United in December. Ricketts’s focus is on the way in which his team pressed. “Look, it’s too easy,” he says, frustrated as Oxford play round the attack.
Callum Lang, the striker and boyhood Everton fan, passes the doorway. Ricketts calls him in and slides magnetic counters round on a tactics board. “I need you to dovetail with Shaun Whalley and Norbs will be the floater in midfield,” Ricketts says. He is energetic as Lang listens intently, then pats him on the back and sends him to the dining room.
Limited space means Shrewsbury’s canteen, at the end of a narrow corridor painted in a vibrant blue, is transformed into the meeting room. The words of Pep Guardiola — “I can forgive everything but if they don’t run, they don’t play” — are printed on the wall and chef Dave Hindhaugh is busy preparing a cajun chicken lunch in a cramped kitchen in the corner.
Darkness descends and the presentation begins. It is short and sharp. “I want them to see it, feel it, then do it,” Ricketts explains. He stresses that Shrewsbury need to be patient, to close down in groups. “Everton wanted to press individually and they got played through every f***ing time,” he says.
Instructions on how to defend against the Premier League leaders are followed by ideas on how to hurt them. Ricketts singles out captain Norburn. He suspects Pedro Chirivella will play in midfield and sees the Spaniard as a possible weak point, with Norburn’s ability to nab the ball.
“He takes too many touches all the time,” Ricketts says. “He’s quite slow so that is someone we can really pinpoint and go for a little bit. The full backs like to go so if at any point we can turn the ball over here then there’s massive space in behind. We need that one-v-one.”
The strongest focus is on set pieces, though. “I think they are vulnerable here,” Ricketts says, pointing with a red laser pen to the space in behind Liverpool’s defensive line. After explaining it on the projector, he shows how to capitalise during the final training session outside.
A one-touch warm-up is followed by the teams being divided into two for a nine-a-side game on half the pitch. The players, wearing GPS vests to monitor their levels, are allowed only two touches. “Because that’s how they’ll press tomorrow,” Ricketts shouts over the sound of a pressure spray washing a plough in the neighbouring tractor repair centre.
The set pieces are left to last. Ricketts has recognised how Liverpool’s defence breaks out as quickly as possible from corners, so Norburn’s delivery is key. A short routine is designed to lure the opponents into leaving a gap, and Aaron Pierre scores twice. “You’ll have your name in lights at the Meadow,” Whitehead says.
Back in his office, Ricketts is looking ahead. “You just want to stay in the game for the first 30 minutes,” he says. “You don’t win the game then but you don’t want to be blown out of it either. Jason Cummings is looking really good so if we can bring him on, he’s a goalscorer, and he’s looking really sharp.”
In the end, the call for Cummings comes after an hour as Love’s own goal has set them back further. It looks to have dashed all the good work in the first half when Laurent, Goss and Dave Edwards, in place of Norburn, were compact in the face of the impressive Curtis Jones, the back-three solid, the wing backs calm and composed. Shrewsbury had worked the channels just as Ricketts had asked.
Cummings’s equaliser is the product of a long kick from goalkeeper Max O’Leary and a flick from Whalley. Delirium follows, the fans invade the pitch at full-time. A replay at Anfield is earned. Ricketts and his team deserve the reward.