Stags’ boss Adam Murray was pleased to see his side pick up a point against Cambridge United this afternoon, despite not being at their best.
Murray’s men stretched their unbeaten home run to eight league matches on an afternoon when both sides defended resolutely to prevent the deadlock from being broken.
And the manager said his side weren’t at their best against the U’s and believes picking up points in those situations is an important attribute to possess.
“You can’t win every game; this is a competitive league and we need to understand, as a football club, that you can’t win every game. Be it home or away, you can’t, and when you’re average you still need to tick points off and we’ve done that today,” the Stags’ chief said.
“It was a classic League Two game and I don’t think any team got any rhythm, I don’t think there was many shots on goal, there wasn’t much creativity, but when you’re average and you tick points off, you take that.
“They’re a very good team, a very strong team [and] they just need the rub of the green and they’ll be up there this season, don’t worry about that. We’ll look back at this as a very good point and move on.”
The stalemate against the U’s ensured Stags secured their second clean sheet of the season and Murray believes his side were more organised defensively this afternoon.
“You can’t have any more, defensively. We’ll take that, we’ll take a clean sheet, I don’t think Scott [Shearer] made a save. Scott hasn’t had to make a save so defensively, organisation-wise, we were a lot better than we have been [in] these last two games.
“I thought we could’ve been a bit better in the final third and the middle third with our decision-making. Our decision-making let us down today. Can you put that down to conditions? Partly. It does play a part but we’ve still got to be better in them areas.”
The gaffer revealed prior to the game that striker Danny Rose suffered a fractured eye socket in the 2-0 Checkatrade Trophy defeat to Doncaster Rovers and will see a specialist on Monday, but Murray also revealed that a number of players are nearing full fitness again.
“He’s got [an appointment with] a specialist so we’ll make no assumptions yet. We’ll see what happens on Monday but he’s obviously a big player for us. He’s somebody that scores goals and you want them people in your team.
“He had no problems with his vision and then the next day, he was coughing up blood so there was obviously something ‘gone on’ so he went for a scan and an X-ray and that was when we found out.
“We’ll see on Monday but again, we got more minutes into Hendo (Darius Henderson) today, which he needs, we got more minutes into Pat [Hoban], these are big players for us. We’re hoping that over the next seven days we’ll see a big improvement in Jack Thomas and Chris Clements.”
Supporters can view Adam Murray’s post-match interview on Stags PlayerHD.
