Scott Shearer targets promotion No.8 with the Stags

Shearer, 34, had played for 11 clubs including Wycombe, Rotherham and Coventry, before Stags in a 15-year career, and been a promotion winner no fewer than seven times.

Now established in the No.1 jersey after a stop-start beginning to his Stags career, he said: “It’s (staying) something me and the manager have spoken about, but that’s up to him to decide. I would be delighted to stay.

“When I signed here the manager sold it to me on a long term project, not just one season, so that’s what I signed up for originally.

“We basically started with a whole new team this year. We started so well and, yes, we fell away, but we are not far away from being a team who are going to compete if we can take that into next season.

“I am used to having success, and I still want success. I want to continue to get that. That would be part of my reason for staying here.”

Shearer felt Stags were not far short this season, but just need to start being more ruthless in front of goal.

“I think everyone knows the top sides take most of their chances and the ones that aren’t up there don’t take as many of those chances,” he said.

“We have been creating chances from all over the pitch. We’ve just not been taking them.

“For the top teams, the front lines are the difference in this league.”

Shearer recently hit the headlines for saving three penalties, two in one game against Morecambe.

But last weekend at Hartlepool United, he was beaten by two penalties in the 2-1 defeat.

“Again we’d done our homework and it was just one of them,” he said.

“The first one I don’t think he hit well and I just went too far past it.

“The second was a gamble really. We’d planned on maybe one penalty, but we’ve given away two.

“I just gambled and that’s it. I’ve had the rub of the green once before, but not last Saturday.

“There is a lot of it on instinct, but we do our homework. Sean (video analyst Sean O’Callaghan), me and Brian (Jensen) work a lot on not just penalties, but set pieces and everything to do with the game coming up.”

Overall Shearer was pleased to finally get his season going since the turn of the year.

He played in the opening League game against Carlisle United before picking up an infected leg from an insect bite at Sheffield Wednesday in midweek and finding himself out for three months.

He returned to play in the FA Cup tie with Oldham Athletic, but it was five months in total until he regained his League place in late January.

Of the season, he said: “It’s been indifferent.

“The infection I caught at the start of the took a bit of time to recover from, but I’ve been delighted getting back into the team and able to play the run of games I have. It’s about playing games for me.”

He added: “It will be a tough battle at Carlisle on Saturday. But we’ve got to get back to basics and getting back to winning football games.

“We’re on a run of seven now without a win so we’ve got to rectify that.

“It’s not as if we are a bad team. We actually dominated the game last Saturday with 10 men.

“So we’ve got to take the positives out of it – and we’ve got to take the errors out of the game also.”