Town manager Paul Simpson was at the stadium today and ShrewsWeb took the opportunity to catch up on a few things.

The final game of the pre-season campaign was confirmed yesterday with the announcement that Stoke City will be the visitors on Saturday 2nd August.

This means that Town have home games against Market Drayton, West Brom and now Stoke City and the trip to Stafford Rangers confirmed.

Simpson is pleased with the programme of games and believes they will prove a good test for his side: "I'm delighted with the way the pre-season is panning out and the games we've got arranged.

"We go to Stafford Rangers to meet up with Steve Bull who I used to play with at Wolves and that will be a good game to look forward too.

"We then have the Shropshire Senior Cup against Market Drayton then hopefully a second game if we qualify for the final, if we don't then I will need to look at putting another game in that week.

"Then we have West Brom and now we finish with a game against Stoke City, two newly promoted sides to the Premier League. Two sides who are local and hopefully these are games which will appeal to our fans.

"Stoke are bringing a full squad, they will have just been away to Austria for a trip and they will all be keen to impress Tony Pullis so they start in the Premier League two weeks later.

"The main thing I want out of the games is so the lads get the right level of fitness so that they are ready for the start of the season."

Simpson also confirmed that he and the players will be going away for a training camp on Almeria, Spain during the pre-season. The lads' fitness and weight have all been measured and the challenge has been set to them to return in top shape for the start of pre-season: "The challenge has been set down to the lads to keep the fitness up over the pre-season and return in good shape.

"We have a trip out to Spain arranged for four days training and what I've said to the players is that there are only 20 going with us. If anyone is behind on where I expect them to be then they will miss out on the training base and that will set them back when it comes to selection for teams. The big thing is that they should all want to be involved in that first game of the season and not give me an opportunity to say you don't deserve to play.

"We have got a fantastic deal with one of our travel partners, Simply Overseas, who have really looked after us and done us a great deal to get us out to Almeria.

"It will be intense training, I've been out and checked the facilities, the pitch surface is excellent, there are good gym facilities, there are mountain bike trails, there are also trim trails which were designed by Daley Thompson and we will probably use them for the 7am fun session.

"As a player I used to think it was good to go away over pre-season to either play games or for a training camp. It's an important part of learning about each other; I can learn about the players, they will learn about each other because in football you probably spend more time with your teammates than you do with your family during the season.

"I'm looking at all of the costs, I wanted to go away somewhere and spoke to the chairman about doing this. I was getting prices to go up to Scotland and stay on a University campus, over to Ireland on a University campus but it is working out cheaper to go to Spain because of the job that Simply Overseas have done for us."

Paul has also been taking the time to look at his backroom staff and make changes ahead of the new season. Joe Hinnigan and Ryan King have left and the Town manager is looking to bring in new faces to bolster his staff:"I'm in the process of looking through CV's for people to come into the physio's post.

"I have meetings arrange for people to come in and do the kit job which may seem a trivial matter but it's important that job is done properly.

"I'm hoping that these staff will be in place before we start pre-season and hopefully we will get a team behind us who will help to make the club better."