Bernard McNally: Salop have the makings of a good side

It’s a big weight off John Askey’s shoulders to get that first win against Southend. I was pleased with the performance, I thought it was a good, all-round, workmanlike performance. There were industrious players in blue and amber working for each other.

It felt like a monkey off the club’s back. They have been playing good football, they’ve just missed that luck – you need luck in this game.

You could see they were behind the manager and doing what he wanted them to do. It was great to see everything come together.

Afterwards we were talking about man of the match. If you’ve got three or four players in contention for man of the match then you know you’ve had a good performance.

I hope Town can continue in that vein of form. It was absolutely vital they handled the pressure.

It was good to see Greg Docherty back in the starting line-up and scoring again. He’s an industrious player, he’s here, there and everywhere.

Anthony Grant does his holding role very, very well, he’s a solid defensive midfielder and Oliver Norburn also had a good game.

It was great for Lee Angol to score again, it’ll do his confidence the world of good. The wingers are vital to Town, they were last year and they will be again. Josh Emmanuel, making his home debut, looked very good. I want to heap praise on Town because they deserve it, John obviously wants them to play football and some of the football they played was really good.

Town just needed that icing on the cake of the three points. Now they can tick that off and move on to the next few.

I heard Mat Sadler say that the draw at Portsmouth was the catalyst for this team. The lads were obviously not too down after the winless run – the fans were probably far more down!

I’m sure the win will do them the world of good. Let’s hope they get to the frame of mind where they can’t wait to get playing and picking up wins. It’s good to see there’s confidence in the squad.

Shrewsbury are a bigger club than I’ve ever managed. There is pressure managing at the Meadow – just like there is at Hednesford Town, AFC Telford, Newtown in the Welsh Premier or wherever.

The pressure he would put himself under is massive. There are sleepless nights, John made a joke of it but it can be like that.

You end up thinking ‘what have I done?’ or ‘should I have gone with this shape?’ He’s been at one club for 30-odd years and come here – I don’t even want to think about the pressure he put himself under!