Mansfield Town

Our side recorded their first win since September on Saturday, as they struck eight goals to thump St Albans City in the FA Cup with Budweiser First Round.

But now, having made it to Round Two where we will travel to either Wolverhampton Wanderers or Oldham Athletic, our boss has re-iterated previous statements about consistency.

“I know I’ve got some good young players at this football club and it’s my job now to get consistency out of them on a game-to-game basis,” said our boss.

“It’s no good having one good game and three averages games. We need [players] to produce seven-and-a-half performances out of 10, on a consistent basis.

“If we get these boys playing consistently well and adapting to what we want them to do, then there is nothing that they can’t achieve.

“They’re young players and good players, who are technically gifted, and a lot them are going to play at a higher level, but consistency is the key.”

Reflecting further on Saturday’s emphatic victory over St Albans, in which Sam Clucas scored four goals, Cox added: “To sum it up, I think it was a professional performance.

“The boys deserve an incredible amount of credit. To score eight goals against anybody is a feat in itself.

“We spoke before the game and we wanted [to put in] a [good] performance and I thought the boys looked as though they were back in ‘our mode’.“

Cox continued: “I want to give credit to my players, because those games are horrible games to play in.

“We come away from it and people shrug their shoulders and go ‘Well you deserved to win!’ but it’s more than that.

“I thought the mindset that we showed went back to that of [what we had] six or seven weeks ago, when we were in our mode.

“People will say ‘It’s only a team from Step 7’, but you have to earn the right to win a football match and we did that on Saturday.”

Our boss also had kind words for St Albans, who were unbeaten in 11 matches ahead of Saturday’s encounter.

He added: “I’ve got to give credit to St Albans, because I don’t think the scoreline really gave an indication of their level of performance.

“I thought they were a decent side. Everyone who went to the game will testify that we had to work hard, especially early on, in order to win it.”