United’s Tuesday night draw kept them positioned nicely in the League Two table, with the knowledge that there could easily be even more points to the tally had chances been taken in key moments, particularly in those games that ended up as draws.
“We came away on Tuesday disappointed that we hadn’t got the win, but maybe they’re the standards we’re tyring to set,” manager Paul Simpson said. “We’re trying to improve all the time.
“Probably last year we’d have had no right to come to Mansfield and expect to get anything. We talked about putting a bit of a marker down and showing what we’re all about.
“That’s the players as well as the staff, the players wanted to do that. I think the way they’ve gone about it on Tuesday, they’ve certainly shown themselves, which is the most important thing, that they can compete against what I think are one of the top six sides in the league.
“I think they’ll be up there at the end of the season. But we have to be consistent, we’ve got to carry it on.”
“It does come from the players taking on board what they’re being asked to do,” he continued. “We’ve had some good sessions where we’ve been able to work on it.
“The players are the ones who’ve understood it, and gone and executed it. I’m really pleased for them. As a footballer you get asked questions all the time, you get questioned if it’s not quite right.
“We were right on Tuesday. I thought we were right mentally, right physically, tactically we were right, so credit to the players for the way they did that.”
And it shouldn’t go unnoticed that it’s just one defeat in the league so far, with the promise of even better to come.
“We’re creating chances, some really good chances,” he said. “We need to be ruthless, clinical, show a bit more finesse, whatever you want to call it.
“We just have to be a little bit better. We’re still getting goals in games, we’ve been getting them. We’ve just got to keep believing and getting ourselves there so that we get even more.”
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