Mansfield Town boss Adam Murray again calls on fans not to lose their heads on social media

Murray was delighted with his side’s showing on Saturday, but disappointed with how some of the club’s followers have again reacted to a narrow defeat against a very good side away from home.

“The wobbly head syndrome comes out again with people when you’ve lost a game,” he said.

“But there is only one team in the League that’s conceded fewer goals than us.

“We have scored just as many goals as the teams in the play-offs, if not more. So what a great position to be in.

“We need to understand, it’s an arrogance, we can’t go to anywhere away and expect to be gung-ho and play eight up front and no goalkeeper and go attack, attack, attack. You can’t do it.

“The way the game is now you have to be structured and organised. You can’t be ignorant and arrogant and think we can go away to any team in this league and go gung-hu. You’ve got to be sensible in your approach.”

He added: “If it wasn’t for an X-factor bit of play on Saturday and we get the rub of the green then we come away with Luton with a totally different conversation.

“We went to Notts County solid with a 4-3-3 and people tell me it’s the best away performance they’ve seen in years.

“Then we went to York and did exactly the same and won. We got all our joy in the second half playing one centre forward.”

Murray said, while he welcomed opinions, they needed to be realistic.

“It’s got to be an educated opinion,” he said. “The game is turning into an interesting world. There are four million Gary Nevilles now.

“Now everyone wants to write a column, everyone wants to write a blog and the game is turning into an analytical minefield.

“It’s important we keep a real educated opinion on what we are saying as our set-up on Saturday was to handle their threat and then put ourselves onto them, and we did that.

“We are in a good place and we are looking solid. I read an article by Gary Monks saying when he went in there (at Swansea), one of the best attacking teams in the Premier League, all his work is on defensive shape.

“It’s brilliant. It’s the way the game is going and everybody is looking at the game in a different way.

“Everyone used to go - they play 4-4-2 and they play 4-4-2. Ninety per cent of the teams in world football don’t play 4-4-2 now. It’s no co-incidence. There is a reason for that.

“The game is becoming a midfield battle and every team looks to gain an advantage in midfield, whether that’s an overload centrally or wide men coming in.

“So everyone wants to analyse the game now and the chat in the local pub is becoming a chat that’s splattered across everybody’s internet page with social media.”

He added: “It’s fantastic as the game is opinionated, but things have to be focused and educated in what message they are giving out as we know what these messages are like and they get put forward and people jump on bandwagons.

“I love twitter. I don’t tweet, but from an educational purpose it’s fantastic as you get some good stuff on there that you can pick up on. You also get a lot of tripe on there which is brilliant to read and makes you smile. It’s the way of the world.

“You look at the way we give out players information now and it’s via iPad or iPhones. The game is moving forward rapidly and I’ve not got a problem with that.”

Reflecting on the Luton defeat himself, Murray said: “Obviously we lost which is disappointing, but sometimes you’ve go to see the wood for the trees so to speak.

“We went there with exactly the same set-up as we played at home to Crawley the week before, exactly the same mind-set. The difference was we came up against a better team on Saturday so we couldn’t affect them as much as we wanted to, especially first half.

“With the ball we didn’t really get our rhythm going, but defensively we were solid like we knew we’d have to be for periods away from home and second half we should have got something out of it.

“You can’t miss as many chances as we did away from home and expect to come out with anything.

“But I am really pleased with our progress and big parts of our performance on Saturday. So it’s a positive.

“I said after the game to John (Still) that I never understood managers coming out of games in a positive frame of mind after losing, but I get it now.

“The way we went about Saturday there were lots of pleasing things for me and the progression I saw Saturday from where we were coming from was massive.

“We’ve gone to a place that is always tough to go to for any team and we should have won. So you have to be pleased with that.”

He added: “Looking at the fixtures in our first 10 games, we looked at Luton and Plymouth probably being our toughest ones. But we are more than capable of beating these teams – and what a great position to be in.

“You wouldn’t have said that last year. I wouldn’t have. So let’s get our happy faces on. We are in a great place. We are one point out the play-offs and only five points off top.

“You’d have taken that after eight games, so put the wobbly head syndrome away and let’s get on with it.”