Stags’ boss Adam Murray has challenged his players to retain their high standards ahead of Saturday’s visit of Wycombe Wanderers to One Call Stadium.
We will welcome the Chairboys at 3pm on Saturday (15 October) following last week’s thrilling 3-1 home victory over local rivals Notts County.
And manager Murray, 35, wants his players to keep their standards high after putting in a number of good performances over recent weeks.
“The big thing for the group now, and for individuals, is don’t let your standards drop,” the gaffer said.
“We said it before the Port Vale game, before kick-off, we’d got the standards in a very high place – keep them there and push them on now and up to now, the boys have done that.
“I keep saying to the players: ‘give me seven out of 10 every week’ because the quality we’ve got, we’re always going to get a few eights and nines so if we can hit sevens every week, you’re going to be 'in and around it' and that’s what we’ve managed to do in the last few weeks.”
After praising the performances of strikers Pat Hoban and Danny Rose after last week’s win against the Magpies, as well as that of goalscoring duo Matt Green and Darius Henderson, Murray says the dilemma of which frontmen to name in his starting XI is a good decision to have to make.
“I like my sleep when I get the opportunity. When I do get chance to sleep, I take advantage of it and having positive puzzles like that to solve is not going to keep me awake.
“I know a lot of people before the game on Saturday were saying that Matt Green should be playing, but he’d only scored one goal in I don’t know how many games.
“What we’ve done with Matt and how we’ve worked Matt, he’s in a fantastic place now. He’s up for starting on Saturday, I’m not going to lie about that but at the end of the day, the boys that put the work in on Saturday before Matt came on, it was a great shift from them as well.
“We want to keep a consistency in certain things but at the same time, we look at the opposition and it has to be ‘horses for courses’.”
At the other end of the pitch, the Stags’ chief has an equally tricky selection issue with a number of defenders beginning to come back in to contention, including Kyle Howkins, who has returned to training after his hamstring injury.
“We’ve got Alex (Iacovitti) back today as well which is another big boost for us so the back line is strong. Tafty’s (George Taft) started running again so he’s back very soon so I wouldn’t like to be a centre-half at the minute, because it’s right on their toes.
“It’s good competition for places, it’s good options, [and it] makes us strong. I think that Lee (Collins) and Pearcey (Krystian Pearce) have been brilliant together, but at the same time, Kyle and Pearcey looked very strong together when they [played] together and Alex has been a sensation since he’s come in to the club.”
Meanwhile, midfielder Jack Thomas completed an hour for the under 21s yesterday and Murray said he was impressed by his performance.
"We’ve taken a little bit more time with him to get his fitness up, he’s in good shape. We were going to put him on [as a substitute] on Saturday so that shows how fit he is.
"To get minutes under his belt yesterday and to nick a goal as well, he played well for the time he was on the pitch, so he comes back in to the reckoning."
Supporters will be able to watch Adam Murray’s news conference, in full, on Friday by logging in to Stags PlayerHD.
