With the second half of the season upon us Town manager Gary Peters is looking to freshen things up in his squad.

This started just after the New Year with captain Stewart Drummond joining Morecambe, yesterday Danny Hall signed for Gretna and Neil Ashton and Michael Symes joined Macclesfield Town on loan.

Town currently sit outside the play-off places and Peters acknowledged that this season his side haven't hit the standards that they have built up over previous seasons.

Speaking to ShrewsWeb this morning he spoke about the need to freshen things up to get the squad back performing: "For the first year since I've been here we have underperformed and not done as well as we should have done. As a bunch of staff we have worked harder than we have ever done, on the training pitch we have worked harder than we ever have, we have players who have good enough ability to do well but as a group of players they haven't been performing.

"It's not as if we've given the squad a couple of weeks to get things better they've had since July until Christmas to get it better but we are still inconsistent.

"Player performance hasn't matched expectation and they know they are not playing as well as they should do.

"So we have to freshen things up and the ideal way is to allow fringe players who are not regularly in the side to go out and play games for other people, or in Danny's case go on to further his career somewhere else."

With Michael Symes and Neil Ashton going out on loan to Macclesfield Town a few Town fans have questioned what the future holds for the two. Both have another year left on their contract and GP revealed that he hasn't given up on the two: "I haven't given up on Neil Ashton or Michael Symes and they still have a year of their contracts left to run with us.

"I don't think we've had a really good performance out of Symesy in maybe a year, he had a great spell until he got sent off at Mansfield last. Up till then he'd scored 7 or 8 goals in about 12 games but we haven't seen form like that from him since.

"He's got great ability and he's got to go out and try and rediscover that form. Nothing would make me happier than seeing Symesy score regularly for Macclesfield, he's still our player with another year to go and if he scores goals then great but when we play them he won't be able to play for them.

"Ashy has only started 6 games this season, that's something he mentioned to me the other day, and that's due to the form of Marc Tierney keeping him out.

"Ashy can't play in the reserves all the time; he came here from Tranmere untried in the Football League and has gone on to make nearly 150 appearances for us. He needs to be playing first team games and has gone out on loan to get that and hopefully he can come back with those games under his belt."

Town fans haven't been too happy with the recent string of results but neither has the manager. Expectations have risen at the club and GP points to the improvement over recent season as the reason for this: "Expectation levels have risen and that is because of the form we've shown over the last two and half seasons since I've been here.

"The other reason is the fact that the chairman has pushed on with the new stadium and created a great environment for us to do our work in.

"When I came here my only brief was to keep us in the division, we've done that, pressed on and kept getting better. Last season we went to Wembley, narrowly missed out on promotion, have moved ground and now expectation is that we do something just as exciting this year.

"We have to come up with the goods but we haven't done that as yet and to help achieve that we need to freshen things up a bit."

With three players moving out of the club and GP's continuing look for a new strike the search for new players continues. He already has things in place to bolster the squad and the backing of the chairman to strengthen during January: "I've already got a couple of things in place otherwise I wouldn't let players go out.

"This club is ambitious and we are trying to push forward and even in midseason we are looking at ways to make ourselves good enough to get promoted. At the same time we have to look at preparing for next season so whatever signings we do make will have to have the medium to long-term in view.

"I can't just go short term and that's why deals like the Paul Mullin deal didn't go through in the end. I can't just look at the short term because if it doesn't quite work and we just miss out on promotion then will we better next season because of it and with that move I didn't think it would.

"Saying that you have to admire the chairman's ambition and desire to get things going now. He still has that desire and ambition and he will allow me to bring in players in the January window and we have people we want to bring in that we think will.

"We've got people that we want to bring in who we think will make us better in the long term as well."