New pre-season philosophy for Mansfield Town

He also revealed he would be running an U21 side next season rather than a reserve side.

After announcing a prestige home friendly with Premier League Leicester City on Saturday, 25th July, Murray said: “We have got some things that are done and waiting to come out in the press, including a Championship side.

“But I didn’t want to have a lot of fixtures this pre-season where you are constantly defending, constantly chasing the ball and you team’s not seeing success because it’s pointless.

“My pre-season will be very different from what a lot of the lads will have been used to over the years.

“We are not going to spend pre-season running around parks and running up mountains and hills because we are footballers. If I ever see one of my players at 3pm on a Saturday running up a hill then we’d have major issues.

“We will train to be footballers and we will work very hard. We will go into pre-season fit and very confident.”

He added: “We are looking at not having a reserves next year, more of an U21s outfit.

“So we won’t have 400 first team pre-season friendlies. Some of them the U21s will go to play some of the games as we have got such a good group.

“A lot of the young boys will also go out straight away on loan to gain experience which I think is much more effective than playing in reserve games where there’s not much riding on it. You saw the effect it had on Jack (Thomas) and a couple of the other boys will do that.”