'The wrong call?' Ollie Westbury on Tom Bloxham's departure & Shrewsbury transfer window latest

Shropshire Star

Ollie Westbury sat down with Jonny Drury to discuss Tom Bloxham's departure from Shrewsbury Town. On Tuesday, Bloxham completed a move to fellow League One side for an undisclosed fee, that leaves Salop with just 17 senior players in the squad.  Ollie and Jonny discuss the move, whether it was the right time to let Bloxham go in the midst of a relegation battle, and where it leaves Salop.  They also look at other outgoings and the desperate need for new signings.

Transcript

00:00Hello, Salop fans. Welcome to shopstar.com. My name is Jonny Drury. I'm here with Salop

00:13correspondent Oli Westbury for a Shrewsbury Town update, and it's safe to say a lot has

00:18been going on in the last few days at the Crowd Meadow and not, well, most of it, not

00:24great. Players departing, you know, rumours of other players departing, and then on Tuesday,

00:32the severe blow that the sort of startlet in the Shrewsbury side, Tom Bloxham, has been sold to

00:38Blackpool. Oli, it's difficult to kind of surmise everything because it seems to be getting

00:46almost kind of worse and worse by the days of the transfer window, and Shrewsbury has now lost

00:51their kind of star forward to another League One club. A bitter blow in the middle of a,

01:01you know, in the middle of a relegation battle. You never want to lose your best players, but to

01:05kind of sell Bloxham to Blackpool in the midst of a relegation dogfight, it's just a huge blow.

01:13You can see why Salop fans are obviously angry about this, and you can kind of understand why.

01:19Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been a fairly deflating 24 hours, to be completely honest with you.

01:26Obviously, we've got the story on Monday night about, you know, there being some serious

01:30interest in Tom Bloxham from Blackpool. And, you know, within 24 hours of that story going, he'd

01:39gone. Gutted personally, because, you know, he was one of the players that kind of got you off

01:47your seat. He was one of the players that you really felt like could make something happen for

01:51Shrewsbury. So he is somebody who's going to be missed, you know, quite severely. And just like

01:59you say there, like, you know, they're in the midst of a relegation dogfight, you know, and it's

02:06felt like over the last month to six weeks that things have finally started to almost pick up.

02:12Gareth Ainsworth's come in, you know, he's managed to shore it up defensively. He's been

02:19getting the best out of Tom Bloxham. Obviously, he scored that goal at Blackpool on New Year's

02:23Day to get him a point. He inspired the comeback at Wigan, you know, when they came back to get

02:28a 2-2 draw. And now he's departed. And along with all the other outgoings, it just feels like,

02:38well, it just feels like a borderline inevitability now that Shrewsbury

02:45are just going to struggle now for the remainder of this season. I mean, you know,

02:48they're losing players, you know, at will. And I know that a lot of them, it's probably their

02:53decisions too, but at the moment they've not managed to bring anybody in and, you know,

02:57they're only getting weaker. And Shrewsbury and Tom Bloxham is, you know, the kind of player who

03:05you need, you know, he's a threat and it's a real blow for Shrewsbury fans. You can 100%

03:15understand the frustration that the fans are showing right now. They must be absolutely gutted

03:21that, you know, it feels like Tom Bloxham has been around for a good period of time. He's been

03:28around ever since I've covered Shrewsbury, which is, you know, well into the third season here,

03:32and he's always been around. But, you know, the last month or so has been the best we've

03:36seen from Tom Bloxham. You know, he's been a real, real threat and for him to go now,

03:41it's just a real crippling, devastating blow and a huge blow for Shrewsbury's chances of

03:47survival this season. Yeah, it's always that danger, isn't it, when a player hits form,

03:51you know, a young player hits form, that a club's going to come in and, you know,

03:55the other side of it is it's a fantastic move for him, but it does leave Shrewsbury weaker.

03:59You never want to go into a trance window in a relegation battle and come out of it weaker. But

04:04a couple of players of low knees have gone back. Obviously, Jordan Rossett has gone

04:09on loan to National League side. Now Bloxham's gone. You know, talk of potentially earlier this

04:15week, we saw that Kyle Winchester could be heading for the Salop exit door. You know,

04:19there's been real questions around Salop's kind of recruitment team over the last couple of years,

04:24but they've got a massive month. Something's got to happen because you look at the number

04:29in Shrewsbury's squad, you know, I can't recall off the top of my head how many substitutes,

04:34and they're not a bench for an AFL game, but I'm sure they've got a score on the back of 69.

04:39Yeah, it's seven. No, well, yeah, yeah. The squad has taken a huge hit. You know,

04:51what would be really interesting is to get, you know, I mean, we speak to Gareth Hainsworth

04:55regularly and he's a pleasure to speak to. He's really positive, you know, full of enthusiasm and

04:59full of, you know, regardless of what's happening, I'd still expect him to be that. But I would pay

05:04a lot of money to actually have 10 minutes with Gareth Hainsworth where he would tell me what

05:08he actually thinks because I'd be very interested to know how he views kind of the situation of

05:15Shrewsbury selling the star asset, the star player, you know, in this transfer window.

05:21So, yeah, I mean, and I think what makes it even worse is it's all with the massive huge

05:28game against horizon, against Wrexham on the horizon. I mean, it's a massive game for the

05:33town fans. It's huge. You know, the importance of getting a result in that game is monumental. So,

05:40for Shrewsbury to kind of, you know, in the space of a week to get considerably weaker

05:47before that game, it just kind of, I mean, it beggars belief to be perfectly honest with you,

05:53Johnny. It's been a really challenging period. Obviously, you can see how angry and upset and

05:58emotional that the supporters are. And, you know, it just, it's such a shame because just as things,

06:05you felt like Gareth Hainsworth was picking them up, you know, there was starting to be some

06:09optimism, even if, you know, the end result would probably have still been that, you know,

06:14that survival would be a long shot. There was some optimism, but that feels like it's slowly

06:19ebbed away with like the constant kind of almost, you know, players leaving and we're not seeing

06:25anybody come in. And I know it's hard to bring players in in January, but at the moment,

06:30Shrewsbury, they're getting worse, not better. Yeah, they certainly are on the blocks and think

06:35it's just the timing, isn't it? You know, it's always undisclosed fee. So we kind of

06:41officially don't know how much that fee will be, but is there an argument for, you know,

06:47maybe not allowing it to happen in this window, but if he goes and has, you know, a good three or

06:52four months end in the season, helps Salop stay in the division, you know, you probably can command

06:57an even bigger fee in the summer. Yeah, I mean, that feels like what probably would have been the

07:02best, well, what could have been a better option. Obviously, Tom Blotson expressed an interest that

07:08I imagine that the financial kind of repercussions for Tom to leave were, you know,

07:13very enticing for him to want to get a blackboard. If you were Shrewsbury, you would have thought,

07:17you say to Tom, try and keep us up, try and help us stay in league one this season in the summer,

07:21we'll let you go. We'll activate your extension and then we'll let you go. And that's obviously

07:28not the case. That's not happened. And obviously he's gone now. And, you know, I don't know how

07:35Shrewsbury are going to, you know, try and replace a player with the raw ability of Tom Blotson

07:42with, you know, what money that they've got to spend. So, you know, there's not, I mean,

07:51there's just not a great deal of positive vibes that you can bring to this conversation,

07:57to be honest, Johnny. I think everybody just feels flat. Yeah, they certainly do feel the

08:04face. Just finally, you know, I think it's 17 senior players kind of left at the club at the

08:09moment. We knew they needed reinforcements. We know Gareth Ainsworth wants to bring in

08:15reinforcements, but given what's happened in the last kind of seven to 10 days, or even the last

08:2024 hours, they need a considerable number of additions, Oli, because you're in a position

08:27now where you've got 17 senior players. If no one else is coming in, if you pick up injuries,

08:32you know, you're in a situation that doesn't even kind of bear thinking about from Blotson's

08:37point of view. I think that is the one thing that feels as though everybody is forgetting,

08:42is that, well, not forgetting, but it's so worth pointing out, is that Shrewsbury have

08:46got now a limited number of players in their squad, probably just about enough to fill a bench,

08:52you know, for the game against Wrexham, given how many players that they've kind of left,

08:55but they haven't got a single injury in the squad at the moment. Everybody's fit,

08:59you know, so it beggars belief, really. Like, you would normally expect, it's probably reasonable

09:06to expect there to be two or three players at a time to be injured. You know, if Shrewsbury

09:10get some bad luck with injuries, you know, they're going to be, it just doesn't even

09:15bear thinking about, John. It just doesn't even bear thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just,

09:21I suppose the difficulty is, is that, you know, if they want to decide that they're going to send

09:25loan players back, then of course there, I think there's agreements that, you know,

09:30it happens over certain times, you know, so you can understand, you can understand how

09:38they have to send them back at a certain period, because that's what's in the loan agreements,

09:42you know, to be able to send them back at a certain time of the month. So for example,

09:46if they, I mean, I don't know this for sure, but if Josh Coyote, if they wanted to send him back,

09:51they might've had to have sent, made the decision before, like say the 14th of January. So they

09:57can't afford to sit and wait on it until the end of the month, because then they simply won't,

10:01you know, they won't be able to send him back at that point. So that does force their hand a

10:05little bit, but yeah, it feels, but they didn't have to sell Tom Bloxham. That was a choice.

10:10They made the choice to sell Tom Bloxham and, and, and, and, and, you know, that feels like

10:15on the eve of a massive, huge cross-border Derby, like the wrong call.

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