Shrewsbury Town: Pundit makes interesting Gareth Ainsworth, Darrell Clarke comparison | OneFootball

The ex-QPR and Wycombe boss has been brought in to drag the Shrews to safety.

EFL Pundit George Elek has compared Gareth Ainsworth joining Shrewsbury Town to Darrell Clarke's appointment at Cheltenham Town last season, as the former Queens Park Rangers boss attempts to steer the Salops to safety.

In his first game as Shrewsbury boss, Ainsworth faces one of the toughest tests he could face in League One this season: Birmingham City. The high-flying Blues will make the trip to New Meadow for one of the early kick-offs in the EFL this weekend.

If Town can muster any form of points from the game, it will be a triumph for them, and one that would set Ainsworth up well for the rest of his tenure with the club, however long it may be.

He's trying to rebuild his reputation in the sport after a disastrous time with QPR, but other managers at this level have used a job such as the one he has just taken to revitalise their careers.

Gareth Ainsworth compared to Darrell Clarke

If all goes well at Shrewsbury for their new boss, Ainsworth could well find himself in a position where better job opportunities, slightly higher up the EFL rankings, even if it's just in the same league, start to present themselves to him, according to Elek of the Not The Top 20 Podcast.

He called the decision to bring in the ex-Wycombe Wanderers manager "a roll of the dice that makes total sense", and he believes that this could set Ainsworth on a similar path as Barnsley's current boss, who took over a struggling Cheltenham team last season, almost guided them to safety, and then got the Tykes job off the back of it.

"My guess is also that Gareth Ainsworth has looked at this job, because frankly, with issues around the future ownership of Shrewsbury Town at the moment, it doesn't feel like a great place to go and work right now for an out-of-work manager," said Elek.

"But I've got no doubt that Gareth Ainsworth has looked at Darrell Clarke and has seen massive parallels in both of them, where Clarke would no way have got the Barnsley job this time last year.

"He'd just left Port Vale in a pretty difficult position in League One. Obviously, Ainsworth left QPR in a pretty difficult position in the Championship, but it does feel like he's almost tarnished by his own style to an extent, where there are a lot of fans out there who would say no thank you to Gareth Ainsworth, regardless of the amazing job he did at Wycombe because of the style of play.

"And he's put a look to Darrell Clarke and he knows that if he can go to Shrewsbury, and if he treats this as a nine-month job, and if he can keep them up, and Darrell Clarke didn't even succeed in keeping them up. He just came very close to doing so and won a lot of plaudits in the process.

"Basically, if Ainsworth can use this season as a proof of concept, that his methods can still be effective at League One level, and he can turn Shrewsbury Town around and get them close to survival, then he knows that he will again become a valuable commodity, where suddenly his career over two different spells of two different clubs, with one disaster in the middle of QPR, but at a different level, will be seen as being a hireable commodity, and that's what he needs.

"And Shrewsbury Town, I'm sure, whilst they'd feel aggrieved, it's like they also need survival, so they would benefit out of that too."

Gareth Ainsworth certainly has a League One future if he succeeds with Shrewsbury

Town fans will become very much accustomed to the way that Ainsworth's teams play, and that negative, defensive style often comes with criticism. It's by no means a pleasant watch for the football purist, but we have multiple examples within this decade of it working in the English third tier.

Ainsworth's goal isn't to be as successful with Shrewsbury as he was with Wanderers - his target is to just keep them afloat. But if he manages to help this side survive relegation, then he will almost certainly get good managerial opportunities at this level of football going forward, because his track record, currently, proves that he knows how to be successful in League One.