Murray enforces mobile ban at One Call Stadium

Straight after last weekend’s frustrating 1-1 home draw with Wycombe an emotional Murray accused his players of lacking the ability to communicate and threatened to totally ban mobiles.

That threat has now been carried through and Murray said: “That wasn’t just the emotions talking.

“I do think it’s a valid point and the way, not just football, but society is at the minute.

“We are all guilty of getting lost in this technology world now and forgetting the actual core values of human beings.

“We had a ban on phones at certain times anyway.”

He said: “Players are not allowed to be on their phones as they have to talk to each other.

“We have to go to war with each other every weekend, so the communication needs to be high. The value of understanding personalities needs to be high.

“So instead of it just being certain times now we have put a complete stop on it.”

Stags head for Kenilworth Road five games unbeaten and just one point off the play-offs spots, but knowing another two vital points went begging last weekend.

“It’s good, but a little bit frustrating as we feel we should be in the top five,” said Murray.

“We have only lost three games in 13 League games, but some of the draws we’ve picked up, if we’d turned a couple of those into wins we’d be in the top five.

“It is frustrating, but we are only one point off the play-offs.”

He added: “If we are being brutally honest the plan hasn’t gone to the exact format we’d envisaged.

“We brought in more players than we probably expected to, which has slowed us down a bit. We are little behind schedule, but at the same time, the position we are in, it is incentivised.

“The position we were in the first quarter of last year, it became pressurised.

“So this more incentivised to try to get into those play-offs and I am 100 per cent confident we can do it this season.

“We have a very good group here and we are just trying to find the right, consistent balance.

“If we do lose one player at the minute, we are having to put two in to cover up one job. We need to find a balance to be able to not have to do that.

“When we do that and we are a little bit more ruthless in both boxes, we still have one of the best defensive records in the league which is always something massive to build on.”