Mansfield Town boss Adam Murray happy with squad balance

Adam Murray declared himself 'happy' with his squad ahead of Mansfield Town's 2016/17 season opener at Newport County.

The Stags boss moved quickly to bring in Darius Henderson this week after Adi Yussuf’s exit to Crawley Town on a six-month loan.

And, while delighted with that capture, Murray believes he now has the right balance of youth and experience in the ranks.

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He said: “We’re happy where we are now. You’ll hear that from a lot of managers over the next day or so and the next thing you know they’ve signed six players.

“But I think we’ve got a tight-knit group, team spirit is very high - which we’re big on, and we’ve got some quality in there. As it stands there’ll be no more coming in.”

Experienced front man Henderson joined the club this week and Murray revealed the 34-year-old’s passion for the game still burns brightly.

“It’s one heck of a signing for the football club,” said Murray. “He brings a lot of experience and a lot of know-how. It’s a little bit of the jigsaw we’ve felt we’ve missed over the past couple of seasons, so we’re happy it’s been done.

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“We’ve got to get him up to pace now, which we’re confident we can do quickly. He’s in great nick already so we’re chuffed to bits. With the strikers that we’ve already got in the building, I think he could be the perfect foil for them.

“I think we’ve got a lot of pace and a lot of movement. We’ve got Pat (Hoban), who’s a very clever player, Hendo - I spoke to his last three or four managers and one of the comments they all came out with was ‘he can move’. He’s got a tag over the past few seasons that he gets injured a lot but we’ve done our homework.

“When speaking to him came out with a comment ‘it’s the nature of the beast, I’m a physical player and I’m bound to get bruises here and there’. When you look at his game time over the past couple of years it’s not been massively high, but if you go through the squads he was an unused sub a lot of the time.

“It wasn’t as if he wasn’t in the squad. He’s coming to us fresh. We’ve obviously got to get him up to max tempo but he’s in very good nick at the moment.”

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Henderson has played in the Premier League with Watford and has been tormenting defences up and down the country for the past 16 years.

Summer signing Kevan Hurst is another who knows the divisions well from his time with the likes of Southend United and Scunthorpe.

But it’s not all about experience for the Mansfield Town boss.

“You only get experience by living and doing things,” he said. “Can a handful of it help? Of course it can. But, at the same time, the only way the group that we’ve got are going to get experience is going through situations.

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“Like myself, as a manager, I could have gone out and got a 70-year-old assistant but I’d rather learn myself and get energy and drive into the group that wants to move to the next level and succeed. At the minute we’ve got a good balance.”