And he is also looking for a clean sheet after assessing the otherwise impressive statistics from the first quarter of the BSP season.

Stags skipper Adie Moses is struggling to shake off a calf strain which forced him off midway through last weekend's 3-2 win at Salisbury.

Gavin Hurren can play there but McEwan said; "I have been trying for ages to get another defender in and is not as easy as people think it is.

"But I have intentionally kept quite a few bob from my budget back for loan players.

"Hopefully my phone will go and we will have one in. Adie still has a chance for Saturday and we do have players like Gavin Hurren and Chris Wood who can drop in there too."

Stags' other injury worries, Nathan Arnold and Aaron O'Connor, who both scored last week, are both back in training.

Visitors Woking have a new boss in Phil Gilchrist and have won two games 1-0 up him after spending the season at the wrong end of the table so far.

"We won't underestimate them," said McEwan. "You can have all the talent in the world but hard work always beats talent if talent doesn't work hard.

"We have plenty of experience here. But it means nothing if you are not focused and 'at it' mentally.

"We have no divine right to win at home. We may have to grind some results out here as teams will look at our record and come here to defend and try to catch us on the break.
We need to be solid, compact and get more clean sheets."

McEwan has had a good look at the first quarter of season stats and says he now has something to work with – particularly the clean sheets.

"Before we started the season this was a new bunch of players and we had no idea what they were capable of," he said.

"But the first 12 games reads won six, drawn three lost three, scoring 21 goals and conceding 16 – now I know what they are capable of. It is a good gauge.

"The question now is can we better that over the next 12 matches? Now we can set targets.

"The goals scored is one of the top three or four in the league. But it is obvious where our problems lies as we have conceded too many twos and only managed two clean sheets. We have to get that out of our systems.

"And we must come out of the traps all guns firing in games, not sleepy. You snooze – you lose."