Mansfield Town manager Adam Murray wants his side to start ‘going back to instinct’ after tonight’s 2-0 Emirates FA Cup defeat to Oldham Athletic.
Second half goals from Danny Philliskirk and Dominic Poleon secured the Latics’ passage through to the second round of the competition after the Stags didn't convert a number of first half chances.
Manager Murray said his side are currently overthinking things in the final third and wants his forwards to start being more instinctive in front of goal.
“We’re in a bit of a drought with the goals at the minute. It’s not just the centre-forwards – it’s from all over the place. We’ve had two or three opportunities where we’ve turned down the shot and we’ve tried that extra pass,” Murray said.
“That’s what happens when you’re not quite getting the goals. You start to over-think things and having that extra touch.
“We’ve got to get back to going off instinct because, again, I thought in-between the two 18-yard boxes we looked a lot more solid than we have done in certain games.”
The gaffer saw positives in his side’s performance after dominating the game in the first half, and they could have been ahead at half-time if some of the chances created by the Stags had been converted.
“You can’t miss them chances that we have in the first half and expect to get something out the game. At the minute we’re in one of them patches that you’ve just got to grind through.”
Murray continued: “We know it’ll change if we keep creating the chances and we’ve got to hope that it’s sooner rather than later because we want to stay in that top seven.
“We’ve got to make sure that we keep the confidence high.”
The Stags now go into three Sky Bet League Two games in the space of a week and Murray is already looking ahead to Saturday’s visit of Hartlepool United.
“Our focus now is straight on Hartlepool. We started preparing for that yesterday because this week is a massive week for us. We want to get back on to home turf and we want to get our league performances and results ‘up there’ because we want [to be in] that top seven more than anything.
“Like I said before the game, we’ve got some massive games coming up next week so I wanted to come out of the game with some ‘minutes in people’s legs’.”
