Alex MacDonald says new formation will bring the wins for Mansfield Town

Mansfield Town's players are enjoying the club's new 3-5-2 formation '“ and midfielder Alex MacDonald believes it will soon start producing the wins it is promising.
Tranmere Rovers Ollie Banks competes for the ball with Mansfield Town's Alex MacDonald: Picture by Steve Flynn/AHPIX.com, Football: Sky Bet League Two match Tranmere Rovers -V- Mansfield Town at Prenton Park, Birkenhead, Merseyside, England copyright picture Howard Roe 07973 739229Tranmere Rovers Ollie Banks competes for the ball with Mansfield Town's Alex MacDonald: Picture by Steve Flynn/AHPIX.com, Football: Sky Bet League Two match Tranmere Rovers -V- Mansfield Town at Prenton Park, Birkenhead, Merseyside, England copyright picture Howard Roe 07973 739229
Tranmere Rovers Ollie Banks competes for the ball with Mansfield Town's Alex MacDonald: Picture by Steve Flynn/AHPIX.com, Football: Sky Bet League Two match Tranmere Rovers -V- Mansfield Town at Prenton Park, Birkenhead, Merseyside, England copyright picture Howard Roe 07973 739229

It has taken new manager David Flitcroft a lot of hard work over the summer to educate his players into his favoured system, but MacDonald said: “It’s been brilliant and a lot of the lads have said the same thing.

“We’ve worked on it tirelessly for six weeks over pre-season, implemented it into the pre-season games and the early season performances are backing up all that hard work we’ve done.

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“Also, the manager has brought in quality instead of quantity over the summer and it really does show on the field. The players he has brought in have been brilliant.”

Stags ended up with a third League two draw in a row in Tuesday night’s 0-0 draw at Tranmere Rovers and MacDonald said: “It was another good performance and we dominated for large spells of the game.

“When you go away to a good team like Tranmere, it’s hard to dominate possession, but I think we did that for large spells.

“Looking back on it we should have won it. The most frustrating thing for us in the dressing room is we are dominating games for large spells and performances have largely been very good.

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“But with those performances we now want to start seeing more wins on the board.

“If we weren’t performing and we were drawing these games I’d be a little bit worried. But we are performing very well.”

A clean sheet at Tranmere is always welcome for any side and MacDonald said the players feel confident in their defending right now.

“I know we concede late on on Saturday, but when we are out there it feels we are solid, we are hard to beat and hard to get through,” he said.

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“We go into these games confident of shutting teams out and long may that continue.

“Although we’ve drawn the last couple we feel we’ve had a great start to the season performance-wise and we are now just looking to carry that on.”

On this weekend’s trip to Macclesfield Town, he added: “It will be another hard game on Saturday. It’s tough when you go away in League Two.

“I’ve heard they are quite a direct team and like your Tranmeres and your Yeovils, they all bring something different to the table.

“But we concentrate on us and, if we do what we know we can do, hopefully we will come away with a positive result.”