FEATURED BLOGGER: Set Piece Problems

Mark Plumb writes...

Mansfield Town suffered their first league defeat at the hands of Accrington Stanley, with goals from Hayden Jackson and Billy Kee.

The Stags made one change to the line up that won against Forest Green with CJ Hamilton coming in for Joel Byrom. The first half was a scrappy game with both teams fighting for possession and trying to stamp their authority on the game. The first goal came from Hayden Jackson who got an extra yard of pace past the defenders to slot past Logan to make it 1-0 to the home side.

Mansfield quickly equalised courtesy of Lee Angol, a long ball forward from Logan got headed on by Rose, which Angol was first to react to and open his account for the Stags, which will hopefully be the first of many for Steve Evans men.

The second half started with the Stags on the attack from the off and looked the more likely to score as the half went on, creating chances that caused the home side problems throughout.

Their was a number of good performances from likes of Benning, Anderson and Atkinson looked threatening every time they was going forward opening up their defence but not taking their chances when they arised. Accrington weren't causing many problems and was happy to let the Stags have possession as they were well organised and made it difficult to have a shot on goal.

The Stags also used all their subs with likes of Mellis, Spencer and Sterling James to try and make a difference but it wasn't enough to get through a well organised Accrington side. The way the game they went a lot of Mansfield fans would have taken a point, which has been tough place to come over the years but in added time ex Stag Billy Kee was first to pounce on a loose ball to convert from close range past a helpless Conrad Logan.

Even though it still early days the main problem is not being able to defend from set pieces, which has been our Achilles heal recently. The team is still relatively new so it will take time for them to gel but for me the communication between Logan and the defence has for me cost us goals against Crewe and Accrington.

He has shown he is a good shot stopper but for me he doesn't command his area or defence enough to show enough authority that a keeper should be doing. It is a long season and results at this stage mean nothing yet, with still over 40 plus games to go but it is important we learn from the mistakes we are making so we can learn from them before it to late later in big games.

A point would have been a fair result but we shot ourselves in the foot again with not being able to do the basics, that ultimately cost us the 3 points. The one thing that we can be assured of is we have the players/ manager who will know how to bounce back and cope with the pressure of us being the "favourites" for promotion. Also a huge shout to the travelling Mansfield fans again with another good away following, just a shame the team couldn't grind out at least a point from a scrappy affair.

Overall I thought we played some good football and coped well with the pressure in large parts but need to cut out silly mistakes that keeping costing us games, when we know we have the players to challenge anyone in this league. Up the stags !!