A warm welcome to Paul Simpson, his coaching staff and the players and fans from Shrewsbury Town to this afternoon's game.

I sincerely hope everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing Christmas Day with their loved ones.

Due to printing deadlines that are normally imposed this time of year, these programmes notes are written before two tough away days at Aldershot and Bury.

Hopefully we have managed to gain two positive results from those fixtures as we reach the half way point of our season.

I certainly feel that over the first part of the season, we haven't got the results our performances have deserved.

It is therefore crucial that we look to kick on during the second part of the season and get more points on the board.

If we are able to call upon certain players who have been missing for us so far and have a bit of luck with injuries, we will have a much stronger unit and we will be able to push forwards for a strong finish.

A strong finish for the football club would obviously be for us to finish in the promotion shake up and hopefully for the season to culminate in promotion.

I am sure I will not be the only manager saying these same things at this time of year, I feel that we are one of maybe 14 teams in this division who also believe promotion is available.

One such team are today's opponents Shrewsbury.

Thinking back to our game against them at the Prostar Stadium back in September, it has probably been the only match this season where I can honestly say we got more than we deserved out of a match.

We stuck early at their place to establish our lead and rode our luck at times to grab the victory.

I certainly wouldn't mind some similar sort of luck in today's fixture as we look to finish the year on a high.

Enjoy the game and get behind the lads.