Stags’ boss Adam Murray says his side will ‘learn from this afternoon’s 2-0 defeat to Plymouth Argyle.
A first half brace from Argyle midfielder Graham Carey sealed the win for the Pilgrims, despite a second half fightback from the Stags.
And although Murray says playing over 90 minutes with ten men against Yeovil Town on Tuesday night contributed to a ‘sluggish’ start for his side, he wants his players to learn from the defeat to improve in the future.
“We knew that even if we would’ve gone in 1-0 [down] at half-time, we felt we could’ve put them under a bit of pressure, but we looked sluggish today,” the Stags’ chief said.
“Especially [in the] first half-an-hour, we looked like we were still 'in' Tuesday night, which we were very aware of and we tried to make the players know we couldn’t use that as any kind of excuse, but we didn’t have that energy and that drive in the first half-an-hour of the game.
“You learn from it, definitely. We’ve still got to look in to getting the balance right, especially away from home.
“Because you win a few games, people think you can turn up here and play four up front and go for the jugular – these kinds of teams pick you off and they would have done that to us.”
The manager says both striker Darius Henderson and winger CJ Hamilton were ‘outstanding’ after coming on as substitutes however he wants his players to improve their individual performances on a consistent basis.
“With the injuries we’ve got at the minute, we would’ve liked to freshened it up a little bit more, possibly before the game, but we obviously couldn’t do that. I just felt, at certain points, we didn’t have enough people on their game today.
“And the big thing that we’ve got to get right this season is, we don’t want one in five players that are a nine out of ten, then we drop to a five and a six, we need consistent sevens and we need to get that if we’re
going to be successful in this league.”
Despite slipping to their first Sky Bet League Two defeat of the season, Murray says his side have had a positive start to the season which they can now build on.
“If somebody would’ve said to us at the start of the season that we’re going to be sitting in seventh and I think it’s joint third on goal difference after four games, we would’ve took it.
“We knew this was always going to be a tough one and I felt we lacked that little bit of ‘bounce’ that we had [on] Tuesday night today.”
Supporters can view Adam Murray’s post-match interview on Stags PlayerHD.
