Stags’ manager Adam Murray has reiterated the ambition for his side to surpass the 60-point mark in a Football League season for the first time in 12 years.
Murray’s men are currently on 59 points following Saturday’s 5-0 thrashing of Notts County and a win away at Exeter City on Tuesday night (7.45pm kick-off) would complete his aforementioned objectives.
And the 34-year-old, speaking in Monday morning’s news conference, believes that it would be a good achievement considering the turnaround in playing staff last summer.
Murray, who was named today as the Manager of the Football League's team of the week, said: “Let’s break that barrier as quickly as we can, the way the league’s gone this season you never know what can happen. If we got four wins from four games, you never know what’s around the corner, do you?
“We’ll use these next four games to get past that 60-point mark because that’ll be a milestone for the new group in its first season.”
Looking ahead to the midweek fixture at St James Park against the Grecians, Murray wants his players to keep their focus and put the weekend’s comprehensive win behind them.
“We made sure we were in yesterday morning [and] we are focused on Tuesday night and completing the season in a positive manner.
“It’s going to be a tough game – I said to the lads that we need to right the wrongs from when we played them at home. They’re the only team I felt this season that, as a team, they beat us and as a manager, I got beat.
“He (Paul Tisdale, Exeter boss) is ‘out of the box’ a little bit which I think is superb and he’s a very hard opponent to prepare for. They’re organised in the way they go about things, they’re in a great position themselves and in great form.
“Mentally it’s time to refresh and focus, but we’ve got four games now where we want to win all four – there’s no reason why we can’t win all four. The point is that we get a reaction from Saturday; not a ‘let’s sit back and enjoy the plaudits’. Plaudits are gone now, it’s about Exeter.”
The Stags beat Notts 2-0 at Meadow Lane earlier on in the campaign, and followed that up with a 1-0 defeat to Accrington Stanley. However, Murray wants his confident legion to learn from that experience, to ensure they don’t make the same mistake again.
“They [Exeter] 'did a real job on us' so it’s one we want to put right. We’re in very good form, we’re very confident and we’ll go there and play our game. When you’ve got a little bit of momentum like we have, you just go with it.
“We beat Notts County at their place and went to Accrington and we harped on that we didn’t want that (to lose). We got a below par performance, I’m hoping that we took messages from that – that is part of the journey for the players.”
Despite the short time between their last match and Exeter on Tuesday, Murray says it shouldn’t be an issue and is prepared to experiment before the season draws to a close.
“The boys have been drilled for seven-eight months now so they know certain game plans, they know the way we go about certain things. I might sound a little bit arrogant but we believe we should be in the play-offs at the minute and it’s tough to take that we’re not.
“There’s a couple of things we want to try out – there’s a few things we want to throw in there and have a look at within these last four games, be it formation or personnel.”
Supporters can view Adam Murray’s news conference on Stags Player HD.
