New role for Mansfield Town new boy Nathan Thomas
Mansfield Town fans were expecting summer signing Nathan Thomas to be rampaging down the wings after his move to the One Call Stadium from Motherwell.
But, so far, manager Adam Murray has employed him in a more central role in midfield and said:
“We want our wingers to be attacking but they need to do the other side of it as well and I think Nathan is someone that needs to be freed up.
“He is not very defensive-minded. He is an attacking player. So giving him that licence to go and get around from the middle of the park, get at people and drive from the centre of the pitch, it gets more out of him at the minute.
“But last night we didn’t stretch the game as without Greeny you don’t create the space to allow Nathan to play, so it became a little bit congested in there.
“We shifted him out there for a period of the game, but what we haven’t done – and we will be hammering this home this week – is that we haven’t given a lot of service to our attacking players. It will come. We have some exceptional players in that group and Nathan is one of them.”