Mansfield Town

Our side slipped to defeat in South Wales for the third season in succession three days ago, as Andy Sandell’s spot-kick and Christian Jolley’s late strike consigned us to our first league loss on our travels since October.

“Realistically, Newport have been up at the top of the table for most of the season and you have to respect that,” said Murray.

“It was disappointing [to lose] with the run we’ve been on. We probably went there a little bit too over-cautious and we weren’t expecting that outcome.”

He added: “Our game plan didn’t work; it was a bad day at the office, but we’ve got to move on now and go again when we play Cambridge on Saturday.”

Despite having scored 13 goals in our last two home encounters, The U’s promise to be a tough proposition for our side, as they romped to a comfortable 4-1 victory over us earlier this term.

However, their patchy form in recent weeks, which continued with a 3-0 midweek loss on home soil to strugglers Alfreton Town, didn’t surprise Murray.

He continued: “It didn’t surprise me to see Alfreton win there. They can beat anyone on their day. I nickname them ‘Tempo Rovers’ because when they have it, they are really hard to deal with.

“But Cambridge have also got some good players and they showed it when we went down there earlier this season, so we know what they’re capable of.”