Cotterill praises ‘outstanding’ Killian Phillips

Steve Cotterill heaped praise on on-loan Killian Phillips as his first Football League goal earned in-form Shrewsbury a fine 3-2 League One comeback victory over Port Vale.

Cotterill’s play-off chasers made it six league wins in a row for the first time since way back in April 2015.

Dominic Politic fired Vale in front, but goals from Chey Dunkley, Luke Leahy and on-loan Crystal Palace midfielder Phillips – inside 16 first-half minutes – did the damage.

Jamie Proctor pulled one back with his first goal of the season but it was not enough to stop the Shrews’ winning streak.

“I thought Killian Phillips was outstanding today,” said Cotterill.

“I thought it was a great team performance, but I thought our outstanding performers were Killian and Ryan Bowman.

“Those would be my standout picks from the game. Killian was outstanding – he’s such a great lad.

“He’s 100 per cent in everything he does, his honesty is fantastic.

“For a loan player to come in, we’ve been so lucky with our loan players, to be committed how they are. They could be team-mates who have known each other for five or 10 years, those boys.

“The boys showed what they show every week. They showed great character and great determination.

“We had some good chances to score more than three goals.

“We’ll take the 3-2 win. They beat us over at their place so we’ll take the win here.

“We didn’t start both halves very well. I thought we caused our own problems.

“Once we got a grip of it in the first half, we could have scored another goal or two before half-time.”

Set-pieces were the undoing for Vale as their winless run since New Year’s Day stretched to six games.

And boss Darrell Clarke admitted he only had himself to blame after a first away defeat of 2023.

He said: “I’ll take the blame for that. I picked a technical team.

“We started the game well on the front foot and score an early goal but we are weak at set-pieces and that’s what cost us the game, three set-pieces.

“They didn’t cause us any problems other than set-pieces. We orchestrated our own downfall.

“It’s not as if the players weren’t aware of it, they’ve scored eight of their last 13 goals from set-pieces.

“It’s not like we hadn’t worked on it, but you have to do the basics right and we didn’t do that.

“I’ll take responsibility because I should have put more height into the team. I’ll take that one on the chin.

“I regret my team selection because we win the game if we defend set-pieces and second phases – it’s as simple as that.”