Dynamic Mansfield Town midfielder Otis Khan believes the ‘system’ orchestrated by boss David Flitcroft will pay dividends.
The 23-year-old was speaking at a news conference at One Call Stadium this morning ahead of Saturday’s match at home to Northampton Town.
The club’s August Player of the Month talked about how the squad’s strategy has fared this season, which has seen the Stags lose just one of their league games so far this year.
He knows, however, that the team need to turn more draws into victories, having won twice and drawn five.
“I think like everyone can see we’re not far away so if we give up on the plan now we’ve thrown all that hard work away,” said Khan.
“I think it’s just getting that last bit of the plan together then everything comes along with it.
“It’s a good system that we play, and I think everyone knows the system well.
“Every game we’ve played we feel like we’ve been on top dominating possession, dominating the game, but we can’t get into this habit of playing nice as a team. We need to go and hurt teams.”
“I think every game we’ve had chances to see off the games and we should’ve got a lot more points than what we’ve got. I still think the positives are there. We’re getting these chances so it’s just the last bit of completing that now.”
Re-iterating Stags’ boss David Flitcroft’s desire to score more goals, he said: “I think we need to be more clinical and a bit more ruthless in front of goal when we get chances early on in the game. I think we have to finish them as early as we can and get that most important second goal.”
The Stags face a team in the bottom half of the table at home for the first time this season, facing Northampton who are placed 20th in the league.
When asked about whether the Cobblers’ league position, Khan said, “They’ve obviously just been relegated from League One, so they are a good team, so we can’t look at it as if it’s going to be an easy game.
“It’ll be a very possession based game but we can’t get into that habit of playing how they play being all nice and pretty but we’ve got good players in the team who can play that sort of way and we can dominate and take a positive if they’re going to play that way.”
iFollow Stags subscribers can watch Otis Khan's interview in full by logging into mansfieldtown.net/ifollow. Tickets for Saturday's fixture against Northampton are still available and can be purchased via www.stagstickets.co.uk.
