Blackburn Rovers a '˜very dangerous' opponent for Mansfield Town

As Mansfield Town secured three points at Newport County, Rovers were also involved in a high-scoring game of their own on the opening day of the EFL season.

Though they weren’t celebrating three points, or even three goals, but rather licking their wounds from a bruising 4-1 defeat at home to Norwich City.

And Murray was cautious when speaking about the prospect that awaits his side.

“They are a Championship outfit so they’ll be very dangerous,” he said. “We know we’re in for a very tough game. They’re coming here after getting beat on Saturday to a very good team in Norwich.

“They’ll want to get their season up and running. We’ll be fully aware of that but we’ll take the game in our own perspective.”

The cup match against Rovers is the first of three home matches for Stags, with Cheltenham Town and Yeovil scheduled to visit on Saturday and Tuesday next week.

Murray said: “It’s three good games, all with different challenges, all with different things we’re going to have to put in place to get points on the board. Home or away we want points.

“I think getting Saturday’s first game of the season under our belt will do us the world of good but our first focus is Blackburn - that’ll be our work today (Monday).

And added: “We need to make sure that in between these games we recover right. I looked at the results on Saturday and you look at some of the teams in this league, I thought it was going to be tight last year, this year is going to be the tightest it’s been in a lot of years.

“We need to be on our mettle for every game we play in.”