It is probably reasonable to say that, of the first five games this season, only Leyton Orient at home was a game when supporters felt that anything less than three points would be a big disappointment.

Wigan, Reading, Bolton and Rotherham were not viewed as games that we "ought" to win but Shrewsbury is a different matter. Our players will experience a different sort of pressure when they travel to the Crowd Meadow on Saturday.

Shrewsbury are a small club playing in a stadium with a capacity of under ten thousand. Apart from ten seasons in the 1980s they have never played above League One level and twenty years ago they played a season in the Conference. They eventually got back up to League One in 2015 but, having finished 19th last season, they are currently in 21st place. If Charlton's promotion ambitions are to have any substance, our team really should be collecting three points on Saturday.

The Shrews haven't had an easy start and have lost four of their first five games - three of them away from home at Stevenage (0-1), Huddersfield (0-1) and Wrexham (0-3). At home they were well beaten (1-4) by Peterborough but bounced back two weeks ago to see off Leyton Orient (3-0). They may well be better than their league position suggests.

Our record up there is nothing special. We managed a tedious 0-0 draw last season and beat them with a Rak-Sakyi goal two years ago. In 2021, with all trains north of Birmingham cancelled, supporters commandeered taxis to get to the game only to witness Daniel Udoh scoring a 93rd minute winner for the home side. We did beat them 3-0 on the way to promotion in January 2019 in a game in which Karlan Grant missed three great chances one-on-one before scoring a late penalty. In May 2018 under Paul Hurst, they pipped us to the League One play-off final by winning 1-0 home and away. The second leg was memorable for an extraordinary late save by Ben Amos to keep the aggregate to 2-0.

Shrewsbury lost to Rotherham in the final and Paul Hurst left to manage Ipswich where, with one win in fifteen, he was sacked after five months. There followed a short spell at Scunthorpe and three good years at Grimsby before he returned to Shrewsbury in January this year. His team have won just five of the 26 games under his charge and he must be feeling the pressure.

Nathan Jones, however, is under no illusions about the game:

“It’s a tough League One game again. Away from home so it will be tough - Paul Hurst’s sides are always well drilled and well prepared."

But he was able to put a spring in our steps with some positive injury news:

“Miles will get minutes tomorrow with the U21s. He's in a much better place. Josh Edwards trained with us today and he's in a much better place, really quickly as well considering the level of the tackle and injury that we thought it was."

We hope that we are still feeling positive by 5pm on Saturday.