Gavin Cowan applauds ‘incredible’ Shrewsbury after late win at Chesterfield

Shrewsbury head coach Gavin Cowan heaped praised on his “incredible” players after Sam Stubbs’ stoppage-time winner sealed a 3-2 victory to dent Chesterfield’s play-off hopes.

After Tom Naylor had put Chesterfield in front, Trey Ogunsuyi then scored twice to give the Shrews the lead.

Tom Pearce brought the Spireites level five minutes from time but Stubbs put away a last-gasp header to snatch the points.

Cowan said: “I thought the players were incredible. The level of work rate, hard work, desire that they put in today was incredible. They deserve all the credit.

“It’s one thing for me and the staff to implement a game plan. They’ve got to trust it, even when it’s not going well.

“We know how good Chesterfield are. A really, really good team, who handle the ball excellently well. Lots of interchange, it just caused a lot of problems.

“We just try to limit what they do on the undercurrent, as we call it, and just make sure that we keep everything in front and on the outside and hurt them when the big moments came, and the players were excellent when it did happen.

“I’m really pleased for the players today, I’m really pleased for the fans and I’m really pleased for the team.”

Chesterfield manager Paul Cook pointed to critical defensive errors made by his team as the reason for their downfall.

“It’s really tough,” he said. “The goal just on half-time’s a killer.

“You have a number nine scores a goal, eight yards out in the middle of the goal unopposed. That goes in at half-time, 1 -1 in a game you’ve totally dominated. We’ve had chances to maybe go another goal or two up and we haven’t taken them.

“Unfortunately, the goals we give away second half are really poor. It’s hard to criticise the players because they’ve worked hard today.

“We’ve missed a couple of big chances but it’s a consistency of how we’ve been all year so we have to own that.

“Today was a must-win game for us and at times you looked at us and thought we were a good side and then at times you looked and thought we were a bad side.

“We defend as a team. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of work goes into how you defend and, unfortunately, we’ve let ourselves down.

“You can’t have free headers in the middle of the goal so that’s a responsibility that players in the dressing room know. And when you come to those points in a game where you’re OK, we have to defend this situation.”