AFTER a miserable week on the road, Swindon Town manager Mark Cooper says his side have put themselves under tremendous pressure to pick up all three points when they meet Shrewsbury at the County Ground tomorrow.

Limp defeats at Stevenage and Gillingham have burst Town’s bubble of late, leaving them in need of a win when the struggling Shrews come calling this weekend.

Cooper was irritated by the lack of potency his team displayed up front at the Lamex Stadium and Priestfield and he’s all too aware of the importance of victory on Saturday.

“It wasn’t a nice week last week. We lost two games and the more and more I see those games the more I see the reasons or reason why. Hopefully we’ve done something about it,” he said.

“We have to win, don’t we. It’s alright saying that we’re at home but you put pressure on yourself to win. We certainly have to do that this week.

“Shrewsbury have lost their manager and it will be interesting to see what impact that has on their team, whether it galvanises them. I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing when a team loses its manager, it’s a tough one to read.

“It will be a tough game as it always is. We’ve certainly not been out of sight in too many games, where you can sit and relax with 20 minutes to go. It seems that with 20 to go I have to really go to work and try to change a few things to either secure the points or try to win them.

“It would be nice to be feet up with 20 minutes to go but that’s very rarely the case. They’re fighting for their lives, we’re still trying to win enough games to keep our season interesting towards the end.”

Shrewsbury parted company with Graham Turner in the week after the veteran manager resigned his post following a run of nine defeats in 13 outings left the Salop side in the relegation zone in League One.

“We have to be aware that the Shrewsbury players have got a couple of free games,” said Cooper.

“They’re either trying to get the caretaker the job or they’re trying to impress the incoming manager.

“It’s a couple of free games without any kind of pressure on them and they can go and play and that will make them difficult. It’s a different task to maybe how it would have been last week.

“We have to be careful, we have to guard against that and make sure we’re really up for it and come out of the blocks firing. I’ve worked on one or two things this week to try to make us better than we were at Stevenage and Gillingham.

“In my opinion there wasn’t too much wrong with the performances apart from the fact that, however you dress it up, we were a little bit short up front.”