Ainsworth 'promised world and delivered nothing'

After winning his first game in charge against Birmingham City, Shrewsbury Town won just four of Gareth Ainsworth's subsequent 21 matches

Gareth Ainsworth's shock departure from Shrewsbury Town after just 22 matches and 133 days in charge has rather taken English football by surprise.

With nine games of the League One season left, 27 points to play for and his side bottom and 14 points adrift of safety, the 51-year-old former Wycombe Wanderers and Queens Park Rangers boss has taken up an offer to join League Two club Gillingham.

Town are highly unlikely to stay up, given their perilous position, and will almost certainly be playing Ainsworth's Gills next season in the fourth tier.

Shrewsbury were also financially compensated for the loss of their head coach, who still had a further 15 months to run on his existing contract.

But the reaction of most disappointed Town fans was a feeling of betrayal, by a man who had made no secret of his attempt to immerse himself into the local community and put down long-term roots in Shropshire.

The big irony is that Ainsworth's first game in charge back in November turned out to be Town's most memorable win of the season - 3-2 against leaders Birmingham City - and their first game without him will be this Saturday's return game with Blues at St Andrew's.

BBC Radio Shropshire match summariser Jamie Tolley, the former Wales Under-21 international, said: "It just seems a load of nonsense, if I'm being totally honest.

"If he was planning X, Y and Z for the future, it just makes no sense to me for the move to happen right now," he told BBC Radio Shropshire.

"It just makes me think everything he was saying was just what he wanted people to believe and hear and, yes, he played it quite well.

"What we know right now is all we can comment on. And unfortunately what we know right now is that he promised the world and obviously delivered nothing.

"When you go for a football manager's job, you present a plan of action of what you're going to do over the next weeks, the next months, the next few years.

"He achieved none of that and now he's jumped ship."

Long-serving Town chairman Roland Wycherley has made only 14 full-time managerial appointments since he first took over from Ray Bailey way back in 1996.

And, in those 29 seasons, he has twice lost managers hoping to better themselves - Micky Mellon, who left for Tranmere after winning promotion in 2015, and Paul Hurst, who departed for Ipswich Town after losing the League One play-off final in 2018.

But 83-year-old Wycherley, who had hoped this would be his final season at the helm after lining up a potential takeover in September, made it clear in his statement issued late on Tuesday this was his most painful piece of news to absorb.

"I saw Roland's statement and I actually liked the statement," said another BBC Radio Shropshire match summariser and former Shrewsbury player Joe Jacobson.

"It was good the fact he talked about offering him [Ainsworth] a contract. You then start to think why didn't he sign the contract a while ago?"

Another fellow former Town player Elliott Bennett, who was on the club's books up until the end of last season, still has a lot of contacts in the Shrewsbury dressing room.

"Some of the lads I've spoken to, they're shocked and disappointed," he told BBC Radio Shropshire. "They're upset at the fact that this has happened so quickly."

Shrewsbury have already made it clear they want to make a quick appointment to replace Ainsworth before the weekend.

Interviews from BBC Radio Shropshire's Nick Southall and Owen Taylor