Nigel Clough stresses Mansfield Town need to 'double down' in hard reset to get back what's been working in League One

Stags were a shadow of themselves against Notts County and couldn’t find a way into the game to trouble their local rivals.

The defeat ended their six-game unbeaten run in League One and Clough described the manner of the result as ‘bitterly disappointing’. He is now eager for his side to learn from the loss and get back to playing in the way that has been working for them.

Reflecting on what went wrong against Notts County, Clough pinpointed the team’s failure to recreate the performances that saw them handle the likes of AFC Wimbledon and Blackpool so well recently.

“I said to the players a week or so ago, you must recognise what we’re doing well,” the boss said in Monday’s press conference.

“When we’re in the midst of a good run, you must recognise why we’re having a good run and then double down on that and keep doing it. For some reason on Saturday, in a lot of areas of the pitch, we didn’t do that.

“We gave it away so cheaply, especially in midfield. I’ve never seen Jon Russell give the ball away as much as he did on Saturday. That was another factor as well.

“Then the mistake for the second goal. We don’t give goals away like that – playing into those sorts of areas and then gifting opposition goals. I can’t remember the last time we gave away a goal like that, and I think it’ll be a long time before we do again.”

The absence of both George Abbott and Liam Thompson was felt massively as the midfield struggled to keep momentum flowing. According to Sofascore stats, Saturday’s starting midfield three of Louis Reed, Regan Hendry and Russell lost possession 47 times between them.

It was a disappointing performance across the board but Clough has reasoned that given Stags’ run of impressive performances, a bump in the road was due at some point.

“We need to get back to the things we did well for six games. This is the thing, we’d been playing above our level, certainly in the last three or four games, so there was going to be a levelling off,” he said.

“You can’t keep performing above all of the time – I just wish it had been a levelling off where we’d gotten a point out of the game.”

Mansfield Town now need to reset themselves and focus on rebuilding their league form. They have little time to dwell on Saturday’s disappointment, as a quick turnaround will see them travel to Wigan Athletic on Tuesday.

Clough explained the tactic ahead of Wigan will be to show the players exactly what has been working this season and how it did not match the performance put in against Notts County.

“You don’t see it coming, that’s the thing. You’re talking to experienced players and ask why we stopped doing what works, sometimes they’re at a loss and they answer, ‘yeah, I know’. Well, if you know, then do it. Don’t come in afterwards and talk about what we should have done. Just do it, keep doing what we’ve been doing.

“Because Oxford couldn’t cope, Luton couldn’t cope, Bromley… keep going. When we play as we want to play, teams can’t cope. So don’t stop doing it.

“The approach is to double down and really emphasise to the players what we have been doing, then this is what we did on Saturday, and it’s not the same. We will be doing that in some video analysis.

“I think we have to do better on set plays – I thought our delivery was very good but we didn’t do enough to get anything on the end of it.”