Mansfield Town set to analyse lethargic start to Saturday's home win over Shrewsbury Town

Stags gifted the Shrews an early goal and did not really get out of bottom gear until the half-hour mark.

“We were very lethargic for the first 30 minutes – not like us at all,” said boss Nigel Clough.

“We gave them a goal start and really struggled for half an hour until we changed formation. I don't know why we started like that so we will have chat with the players this week.

“When we have the odd occasion like that we will always look back on the week with the staff and try to analyse the training.

“Next stage we will talk to the players and ask if we did too much or did we not do enough training?

“It's good they are a very honest bunch of lads that we can have these open conversations with them.”

He added: “All we want to do is learn from it so it doesn't happen too many times going forward.

“The thing we take most from the game is from 30 minutes we did start to get going.

“It makes it harder when you're chasing the game so our response was brilliant. Second half was much more like we want to be at home.

“I think the penalty appeal just before half-time helped us as well.

"It was very difficult to see if it was a penalty but it gave us a sense of injustice going into half-time which probably overtook our feelings of being below-par in the first 30 minutes.”

To give midfielder George Maris extra minutes on his return from injury and try out one or two experiments, Clough agreed to a 70-minute friendly as an 'extended training session' with Sheffield United on Tuesday with Maris playing for as long as he felt comfortable.

Almost all the first team squad were due to take part but Stephen McLaughlin, Elliott Hewitt and Aaron Lewis were all rested as precaution.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​