Mansfield Town

Manager Adam Murray has hailed the efforts of our players, whose recent good run of form has lifted us up to 16th position in the Sky Bet League Two table ahead of Saturday’s trip to Hartlepool United.

Over the last 10 games, our team have amassed 17 points to move eight points clear of the bottom two with nine fixtures of the season left to be played.

Since the start of February and during the same time-frame only league leaders Burton Albion (22), Bury (20), Northampton Town (19), Portsmouth (19) and Dagenham & Redbridge (19) have amassed more points than ourselves.

Nevertheless, our boss wants supporters to have a sense of perspective as we head into the closing weeks of the campaign.

“Nothing has changed from our point of view,” said our boss. “When we lost to Bury, there had to be perspective and when we won on Tuesday there was still perspective.

“I think we’re something like fifth in the form guide now and the teams above us are [mostly] the teams in the play-offs. If that doesn’t speak volumes about the journey that we’ve been on, then I don’t know what does.

“As I said in my programme notes on Tuesday, we’ve got to be realistic of who we are and where we are at this current moment. 

“We all know where we want to go and it’ll be brilliant to click our fingers and be there, but at the minute we’re not.

“We’re in a situation where we’re fighting for points with a large group of teams and I think Tuesday’s results probably sucked a couple more teams into the fight zone.

“So it’s going to be entertaining. We know what we’ve got to do, which is take care of our own business.”

Our team will be hoping to extend their good recent run when they visit bottom-of-the-table Hartlepool United on Saturday.

The Pools themselves go into the game having recorded back-to-back away wins, which has given them a fighting chance of avoiding relegation to the Conference Premier.

Murray continued: “Fair play to them. They’ve kicked in and got some good results, back-to-back. I watched their game at Oxford yesterday and they performed really solidly.

“We go there in good form and with confidence, as do they, so it makes for an entertaining game. 

“The group of teams down there, which I include us in, have all got to go on a good run again to put more points on the board. I said three months ago that this is a battle which will go down to the last day and nothing changes.”

In team news, striker Rakish Bingham has picked up a knock and is a doubt for the game against the club where he spent time on loan earlier this season. Otherwise, our boss has no fresh injury worries.

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