Catling’s Corner Stags Blog: Disappointing week for Mansfield

I now go back to that first game against the enemy, and what was more disappointing than the result was the performance of some players.

One that stood out for me was the normally reliable Liam Marsden, but in this game words don’t have to be said and he couldn’t get any worse than in this game.

But as people have said to me at least he hopefully got this really poor performance out of the way in the ‘tin pot cup’.

Adi Yussuff as well didn’t pull up any trees and you could see he hadn’t played from the start all season.

If given games then maybe he could be good, but he showed very little in this game.

I was also very, very confused by us starting Adam Chapman at centre half.

I can understand when we had the ball for him to go in between the two centre halves, but he has never been a defender and never will be.

This was changed after about 25 minutes and the passing was then a lot better.

The other bit in the game for me which was questionable was taking off Mitchell Rose once again at half-time and bringing Jack Thomas on.

I’m afraid I have to say so far this season Jack is not doing enough. We all know he has the quality but this isn’t the Jack so far we know and I hope he picks up as the season goes on.

The other players that came in for this game didn’t do themselves any favours either, but as Murray said afterwards, it was valuable game time for them.

I’ve spoken to a few people after the game and they’ve all said they were not that bothered about the ‘tin pot cup ‘ so it was probably a good thing to do by Murray as he has already stated the League his is priority.

On Saturday we then got a 1-1 draw against Wimbledon which saw a very below-par performance from the Stags.

I will say, though, just like at County when he came on, Chris Clements was playing out of this world at times. His goal was superb and his all-round game is getting better as well.

I also thought the other stand-out players in this game were once again the partnership of Krystian Pearce and Ryan Tafazolli.

They were excellent again and dealt with probably the most physical strikers in this league this year in Adabayo Akinfenwa and Tom Elliott, the so-called other ‘Beast’ being in Tafazolli’s back pocket for most of the game.

There wasn’t a lot to do either for Brian Jensen and if Clements’ free kick had gone in near the end of the game we would be celebrating a below-par 2-1 win right now.

I will say I thought it wasn’t one of Matt Green’s better games and he does need to improve.

I did hear Murray saying they need better delivery to him, but if we had two strikers up top we wouldn’t have to rely on him having a good game all the while

If Craig Westcarr had started the game up top with him I think it would have been a lot better and we would have attacked them instead of the other way round.

So overall it was a little disappointing and we do need three points on Saturday, otherwise we haven’t taken advantage of us playing on our home ground.

So come on Adam Murray’s Barmy Army and Coys!

Oh, and to just add at the end, did the Spirites lose? 2-0 up and you still didn’t win, oh dear!