Mansfield Town

Manager Adam Murray says our players need to take a long, hard look at themselves if they want to be successful, following today’s bitterly disappointing 3-2 defeat to Exeter City at One Call Stadium.

With just a quarter-of-an-hour to play, our team were on course to pick up a much-needed win as goals from Billy Kee and Vadaine Oliver had overturned a first half strike from Exeter’s Tom Nichols.

But two basic defensive errors allowed the Grecians to snatch three points and inflict a defeat which leaves us just a point above the Sky Bet League Two relegation zone.

“[It was] rubbish,” said Murray, who was speaking in his post-match interview.

“We’ve scored two goals at home and defended like an Under 16s team. For some reason, we find it hard to defend set-plays, so you try and help the boys out and bring everybody back so there are no excuses, and we still can’t defend.

“I’m fed up of walking into a dressing room and people saying sorry. It’s not good enough.

“The realisation of it is that we’re in a relegation battle. We’ve got 21 games left and we need to win a certain amount of them – that’s the way it is.”

Our boss continued: “It’s a common theme that we’ve had over the whole of the season. We don’t know how to win. We get ourselves back into the game and then make some absolutely horrendous decisions and you can’t allow for that.”

During today’s game, we had numerous efforts cleared off the line and Murray has called for our team to be more ruthless in both boxes – starting next weekend when we host high-flying Wycombe Wanderers.

“In both boxes we’re not ruthless,” added Murray. “We created plenty of chances again, but we’ve got to score more goals than what we’re doing with the positions that we’re getting in.

“In the other box, we can’t defend at the minute. It’s a flip of a coin what’s going to happen when it goes in the box and if people can’t take responsibility then we’ll sort that out.

“It’s frustrating when we’re coming off the pitch and their manager (Paul Tisdale) says well played to your team. It’s annoying, it makes me more wound up, and it’s not good enough.”