Joe Dunne frustrated as Mansfield Town fail to see the game out again

Mansfield Town assistant boss Joe Dunne said the Stags must learn to see games out after their latest setback in Saturday's 1-1 draw at Morecambe.
Joe DunneJoe Dunne
Joe Dunne

For the second game in a row Mansfield threw away precious points by conceding late.

Ahead of tomorrow's night's big game at Leyton Orient, Dunne said: We’ve had a couple now – we want to see more aggression to defend it individually in that moment.

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“We defended most of their set plays exceptionally well. We just need to defend that area a little bit better.

“There were a lot of positives in the second half. We worked our system and managed to get into it.

“But the difficulty of the last period of the match, we caused a lot of problems for ourselves.”

In a six-pointer for two struggling sides, Mansfield battled well and got themselves into a winning position through Joe Riley's first goal for the club.

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“We were up against a team that is in a similar position to us and have good home form,” said Dunne.

“The impetus was with them to score and take the lead, so getting into half-time at 0-0 we thought we could then work our system.

“I thought second half we were in good control of the match. Getting the goal, I thought we were going to go on and win it.

“In the end there was some heroic defending to preserve that point, but it shouldn’t have really come to that.

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“We feel that it’s a couple of points that we should have had in the bag again, and the Morecambe goal has come from a disappointing situation.”

Dunne felt the Stags should have extended their lead with their possession, saying: “We just didn’t have that final ball, but we’ll work on that going into Tuesday.

“We thought after we scored there was enough control of the game to get another goal. We felt we had enough to see the game out.

“We added CJ (Hamilton) to the game, trying to get a bit of pace up front and get him in behind. Unfortunately we turned down opportunities to use CJ enough – we’ll speak about that and look at that.

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“We felt it was a good, attacking substitute to make to put more pressure on the opposition.”

He added: “We still feel that we’re building and that we have a lot of good things going forward.

“You take out the small detail moments and we’re probably well up the league now. But that’s where we are and we have to keep on believing to try and move up the league.”

Goalscorer Riley said: “I think when you come to Morecambe, you know it’s going to be a fight and I thought we stood up to it, but it’s disappointing we didn’t see the game out.

“It’s déjà vu again where we’ve done well for large parts but we can’t see it out. We need to look at ourselves and try to do better.”