Ravenhill confident Stags can claw away from dogfight

The midfielder, one of five Mansfield debutants at the Pirelli Stadium, helped lead a great second half fightback after Stags had gone 2-0 down by the break.

Despite many of the team being strangers to each other, Ravenhill has already seen enough for him to think they can turn the season around.

“I am very confident,” he said, “I know we have got to cut out sloppy goals and mistakes. But I have seen enough here today and in training to know we’ve got some very good players.

To read the match report click HERETo read manager Adam Murray’s comments click HERE“There is a lot of ability here and a bit of everything to go forward and win games in this league.

“We will gel sooner than later as we can’t afford to take too long. We will nail down what needs nailing down.

“We have taken a lot of information on board this week, trying to learn the way we want to play and do things.

“They are a great set of lads and everyone has been made very welcome including myself.

“It will take time for things to fully gel, but the way the team performed with five new players in it was really positive.”

On the Burton defeat, he said: “We more than matched them, if not better, and that’s the frustrating thing. They are second in the table yet they are no better than us.

“It was a frustrating debut. But I think we showed in the second half we dominated large parts of the game and created some good chances. We did some really good things.

“But we’ve come away losing 2-1 and that’s going to sit hard tonight until we can clear our heads and go again.

“The positives were that today we’ve gone away to a team at the top and really gave it a go. But we gave ourselves a mountain to climb with those two goals in the first half. After that we had the better of it and at least deserved a point.”

He added: “Our fans were unbelievable. They were brilliant all game, trying to suck the ball into the net behind that goal in the second half.

“I knew what they were all about before I came here and they didn’t let us down today.”