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Shrewsbury Town boss Gareth Ainsworth is of the view that his defenders performed superbly when they came up against Birmingham City’s record signing Jay Stansfield and Blues other big money attackers on Saturday.
Birmingham’s owners are desperate to go up this season and in their attempt to do so, they signed Stansfield from Fulham on a record-breaking deal for a transfer fee in the region of £15m.
The forward has been impressive for Birmingham this season, however despite scoring a goal for Blues from the penalty spot, he failed to help them secure a win against Shrewsbury at the weekend.
Shrewsbury’s defenders impressed Ainsworth with their performance in the game to keep Stansfield and his fellow attackers in check from open play and he hailed them for their display against Blues.
Ainsworth also highlighted Stansfield’s threat by pointing out the Birmingham player’s multi-million pound price tag and indicated that it was not an easy task for his centre-backs to deal with the striker.
“He [Aaron Pierre] and Toto [Aristote Nsiala] and George [Nurse] when he came on, all three of the centre-halves today, we made the game quite simple for them”, Ainsworth told Shrewsbury Town’s in-house media.
“But as a centre-half defending against some multi-million pound players, there is a double-figure million-pound player on the pitch against them today and you are thinking, right, what have they got?
“They came up trumps.
“They were superb.”
Stansfield has fired six goals in nine league games for Birmingham so far this season and will be hoping to get the Blues to winning ways when they take on Exeter City on Tuesday.
