Shrewsbury vs Macclesfield Predictions

Wednesday’s EFL Trophy action sees Shrewsbury Town doing battle with Macclesfield Town at New Meadow. The hosts arrive as huge favourites to win the game against a visiting outfit in complete crisis.

Whilst the EFL Trophy isn’t Shrewsbury Town’s priority this season, they’ll want to win this game and book their place in the knockout rounds. Indeed the competition offers manager Sam Ricketts a good chance to give his squad players vital minutes normally but with no league game coming up this weekend, he’s stated his intention to field a strong team on Wednesday.

That indicates that Shrewsbury will be taking the match very seriously and pre-match talk has centred around remaining professional and not feeling sorry for Macclesfield. Unbeaten in 5 home games and having won their last 3 EFL Trophy games at New Meadow, Shrewsbury can be very confident coming into the match and can be assured in their ability to get the job done.

Meanwhile, Macclesfield come into the game in complete crisis and the fact they are even able to contest the fixture is a feat in itself. Indeed, they are just yet another lower league club that has seen rough financial times hit and all of their contracted first team players are currently on strike due to unpaid wages and not even having active insurance cover.

As such, the visitors will be scratching together a team comprised of loaness and youth team players and that does leave you fearing for them. At the weekend they put out 6 youngsters and 5 loan players and were hammered 4-0 on home soil by 7th tier Kingstonian in the FA Cup, so any improvement at a League One club here looks highly unlikely.

Ultimately, this should be a complete non-contest and anything but a home win is simply unimaginable. By the sounds of it, Shrewsbury will pretty much be fielding their strongest available team and that should be enough to dispatch of a patched up Macclesfield outfit easily.

As such, we really like the look of backing Shrewsbury on the Half Time/Full Time line and are doing exactly that with maximum confidence. The Shrews shouldn’t take long to break Macclesfield down and they’ve been leading by half time in all 3 of their aforementioned EFL Trophy home wins. This should be as one sided a game as they come and we think the hosts will run out 5-0 winners.