Manager Adam Murray has challenged his players to maintain their high standards following their highly promising start to the Sky Bet League Two season.
Stags currently sit in fourth position after their comprehensive 3-0 victory over Newport County at One Call Stadium on Saturday, which leaves them one point from the automatic-promotion places.
Despite seeing his team notch their third consecutive win, Murray was quick to urge the Stags not to rest on their laurels ahead of League Two's tough schedule.
The manager added: "We need to make sure our standards don't drop, we need to continue nailing the little things and we need to be strict with ourselves - we go into some good games now so we want more points. We prepare to make sure that we're 100 percent right, and we prepare to limit the risk of failure.
"At the minute I love it - we're little old Mansfield just chugging along and nobody cares about us. Our players aren't getting the credit they deserve and it's brilliant. Let us go under the radar, we know how good our players have been for the whole of the season so far.
"The question is now, how long can you be good for? That is the question I'll be putting to them. We need to be consistent and you don't win anything by being good in a month, it needs to be over the course of the season. We have to make sure our intensity and focus gets even higher now - the work load will go up and people have got to keep up with that.”
Although Plymouth Argyle opened the gap at the top to three points with a win over Notts County yesterday, the Stags’ boss doesn’t believe any side will break away from the rest.
"I can't see anyone that's realistically going to run away massively with it - it's going to be a league of consistency more than ever this year. It's going to be tight because there's a lot of good teams in there this season. It will be a lot tougher than it was last year.
"There's only going to be a few points from top to bottom, we need to make sure that when we don't win, we draw - and keep the belief. At the moment our belief in the team is very good and we need to make sure that it stays there."
Malvind Benning netted a second stunning strike twice in the space of seven days as he doubled Mansfield's lead with a long-range volley, which won the goal of the weekend for Sky Bet League Two, but Murray says he was more pleased with the defender's work ethic at the back.
After being asked which of his two sensational goals was better, the manager declared: "His clean sheet [was better]. Goals are brilliant, goals win games but the basis of any successful team is clean sheets and if you get clean sheets, you don't lose.
"Mal's (Malvind Benning) an attacking full-back, he's always going to cause problems and we've worked on a lot of things with him to put him in the positions to do that. The learning curve for him was learning his defensive shape and discipline. Everyone will see the top corner finishes and all the pretty stuff but for me the hardcore work he's done is what pleases me."
View Adam Murray's news conference in full on Stags Player.
