Nathaniel Mendez-Laing's goal gave Cardiff City a half time lead at Shrewsbury last night but after a positive first half the Bluebirds were distictly second best after the break.
Shrewsbury scored two in as many minutes in the opening six minutes of the second half, one of those a penalty - the third conceded in the last four games.
FT Shrewsbury 2 - 1 Cardiff City
Fan reaction: Aidan MacGinley
It was the proverbial game of two halves. We dominated the first half and should have gone in more than one goal ahead. We started with a line up which looked to be very close to the one which will start the first proper game and looked much the better team. Of the new boys I thought Tomlin and Mendez-Laing had good games and Zohore looked lively up front.
I was looking forward to the second half but was amazed at how quickly and totally we fell apart. Shrewsbury got two quick goals and we never remotely looked like equalising in fact we could hardly string three passes together and I don't think the Shrewsbury goalkeeper had a save to make in the second half. We seemed to get worse with each subsistution and could barely get the ball into the Shrewsbury half.
Not sure if there is anything much you can learn from these games but if there was a lesson here it was that our first eleven is pretty good but there is not much beyond that. Came away less optimistic abut the forthcoming season but perhaps that is reading too much into a friendly game. Maybe Shrewsbury are going to have a much better season than expected,they have beaten Aston Villa, Wolves and Cardiff in their last three games and with ease too.
Manager reaction: Neil Warnock
"I thought there were quite a lot of pluses if I'm honest but there were one or two negatives that crept in in the second half that I've got to remedy," said Warnock.
"I think we started (the second half) sloppily. We didn't do what we should do. Without naming names, we gave them too much room and the first goal was a prime example, certain people should've closed down two or three times and didn't and you get punished and you get punished higher up aswell.
"They've (Shrewsbury) beaten Aston Villa and Wolves in pre-season so we knew that they'd probably be our hardest test.
"But what disappoints me is the way we conceded. If we're going to do anything next year we can't concede as sloppily as that.
"That's three in four games we've conceded (penalties) so we've got to eliminate them things.
"I think we should have been four or five up at the time (when Shrewsbury equalised) but you still can't give stupid penalties away.
"The worst thing for me is conceding the goals and looking at where they came from and how we can eradicate them," added Warnock.
"No disrespect to Shrewsbury but they didn't create things out of anything. We had five or six chances to clear the first one after the goalie saved it, and for it to go in the back of the net is amateurish really."
Manager reaction: Paul Hurst
“I thought it was a more realistic game in terms of how Cardiff played was more like League One opposition”, Hurst said.
“They threw the ball forward a little bit more directly at times and in the first half we were a little bit lacklustre in our display.
“I thought it was a bit slow at times. There weren’t as many away fans, so it had a bit of a different feel to it, so I wasn’t really happy at half-time in truth.
“Second half we had a lot more forward runs, we were more positive, on the front foot a lot more and therefore played better.
“We created a few chances first half, but certainly gave up to many early on and gave away a terrible goal on half-time.
“Credit to them there was a reaction, but I don’t want to have to get to half-time and have a moan at them for us to get that reaction at half-time.”
Shrewsbury started the second half with two goals in the opening five minutes.
“Sometimes it’s just about being positive and running forwards”, said Hurst.
“Alex Rodman did it far better second half, with and without the ball. Jon Nolan drove forward with the ball. Abs made the box and had an effort. It was just a lot better from that point of view.
“At the start of the second half we were still too deep, but we got better as the half went on and therefore we were closer to second balls, whereas first half we didn’t win anywhere near enough.
“Second half was much better and we got the victory, but there were two sides to it in terms of how happy I was with it.”
Shrewsbury Town: Henderson, Sadler, Whalley, Ogogo, Morris, Dodds, Brown, Bolton, Nolan, Nsiala, Rodman.
Subs not used: MacGillivray, Gnohua, John-Lewis, Morris, Adams, Jules, James, Shelis.
Goals: Whalley 49 (pen), Dodds 51
Cardiff City: Etheridge, Peltier (Bennett 54), Manga, Bamba, Richards (Coxe 84), Mendez-Laing (Pilkington 45), Gunnarsson (Ralls 63), Halford (Damour 63) (Morrison 87), K Harris (Meite 78), Tomlin (Kennedy 63), Zohore (Ward 63).
Subs not used: Byrne.
Goals: Mendez-Laing 44
Referee: Bobby Madley