Mansfield Town

Midfielder ready for tough battle at Fratton Park.

Midfielder Jamie McGuire wants our team to roll our sleeves up and battle for every point in the midst of a growing injury list – starting this weekend when we make the long trip to the South Coast to take on Portsmouth.

We head to Fratton Park with a lengthy list of absentees, which centre-back Ryan Tafazolli (hamstring) and skipper Adam Murray (suspended) have joined over the past few days.

“We’ve got to roll our sleeves up and just get on with it,” said McGuire.

“What we’re going to try and do is frustrate them. Whatever team the gaffer puts out, we’re going to work hard as a team and make sure we give 100%.”

He continued: “[The league] is so close. If we won last Saturday, we’d have been in the play-offs and everyone would have been happy, but we’ve got beat 1-0 and gone down to 15th.

“So it’s a strange league. There are some big teams around us – Luton, Shrewsbury, who have spent well, and Portsmouth, who are just one point ahead of us.

“If we win it’ll take us back up there again, but I think the main thing for us is being consistent. That’s what we’ve got to try and do. To pick a point up on Saturday against Portsmouth should kick-start us again.”

The motivation to put in a positive display at Fratton Park will partly stem from last Saturday’s disappointing 1-0 defeat to Accrington Stanley.

Our players’ performance in the first half of that match was described by manager Paul Cox as one that ‘won’t be tolerated’ and McGuire agrees that it wasn’t good enough.

“The first half wasn’t acceptable. It wasn’t us as a team, as players, or as a club,” said the Liverpudlian.

“I’ve been [involved] in games like that before, where for the whole 90 minutes it just doesn’t happen as a team, and we can’t let that happen again to be honest.

“The first half was dead and we had nothing about us. To be fair, I think we were quite lucky to come in at half-time only 1-0 down. We changed things around in the second half, huffed and puffed and had a good go, but things just didn’t happen for us.”

McGuire added: “The gaffer has worked us hard [in training] this week and I think we should be. The lads have all responded – especially the ones we’ve got out on the training ground.”

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