Mansfield Town

The Stags lost by a goal to nil at the Wham Stadium as Accrington Stanley had Sean McConville to thank after his first-half strike. 

The gaffer was frustrated with his side’s lacklustre showing in Lancashire.  He said: “You hammer it (against complacency on Friday’s win) home, and then you ask people to take that on board. That’s the most disappointing thing tonight that it wasn’t taken on board. Some of the performances tonight were lacklustre. It’s a massive thump back down to earth.

“If it was a group of naive people then maybe you’d let it ride, but we’ve got some experienced boys in there. 

“The warnings were there because we’ve all seen it a million times. To see it coming and the lads not react to that is the most disappointing thing tonight.”

The boss was disappointed with the way his side conceded the goal. “We switched off and gave a poor pass away. They’ve had one shot [in the] first half and it’s gone in.

“The disappointing thing is the ref has given the throw to us and the fourth official’s changed it. We’ve set up for our throw and then the game’s going again. We’ve given the ball away sloppily outside our 18-yard box trying to risk a pass and I think it’s nipped a defender on the way through,” Murray added.

“[In the previous games] we’ve set out to play on the front foot and go and get into people faces and go and win the ball high up and we didn’t do that tonight.

“We didn’t have that energy. The people and the managers that I've spoken to the last four five weeks who have seen us have commented how organised and disciplined we look as a side but we weren’t that tonight.”

Tonight's performance at Accrington could serve as a wake-up call, Murray hinted. “The most pleasing thing for me is that I know there’s a lot more to come from this group. We’ve shown in spells over the last two weeks what we can do. It’s about consistency.”

Murray admits there will be no let-up in the players' schedule, with the players being brought into training every day before the visit of Oxford United on Saturday. 

“They’ll be in 9 o’clock in the morning, and they’ll be in Thursday morning, and they’ll be in Friday morning, and they’ll be in all day until they realise that we’re not good enough to turn up at 60/70%, to anywhere. 

“We’re a team that we have to be at 100% every game, every day and when we do that we’ll have a chance of being up there in this league.

“We’ve shown that we're a good side. To be a good side we have to do everything to the tee. 

“We can’t carry people, we can’t have people going through the motions. These boys will bounce back. There’s a lot of wounded egos in there because they know they’ve let people down tonight but we will go again.”