Ryan Sweeney thanks Mansfield Town fans after they suffer another ‘tough watch’ at Plymouth

Ryan Sweeney thanked Mansfield Town's suffering diehard fans as they sat through yet another capitulation in the season's longest away trip at Plymouth on Saturday.
Stags on their way to another defeat at Plymouth at the weekend. Picture by Chris Holloway.Stags on their way to another defeat at Plymouth at the weekend. Picture by Chris Holloway.
Stags on their way to another defeat at Plymouth at the weekend. Picture by Chris Holloway.

Stags were beaten 3-1 – a third defeat in a row – in front of 246 away fans who got no reward for making the gruelling 534-mile round trip.

“It’s unbelievable, to be fair,” said the big Mansfield defender.

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“I don’t know if some of them made the trip down yesterday, and there were probably people leaving at six o’clock this morning to get down.

“On behalf of the staff and all the boys it’s a huge thank you because at the moment it’s a tough watch. That game summed up our season.

“We’re not doing as well as we would have wanted. But they travelled in their numbers, made a lot of noise, backed us and still clapped us off at the end. Huge respect to them and thanks a lot for making the journey.”

Boss Graham Coughlan had asked his side to take the game to Plymouth but tighten up at the back but, although they created a wealth of chances, the defence was as leaky as ever and have now let in seven goals in two games.

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“The game plan was to come down here and be on the front foot and I thought we executed it well, especially in the first half,” said Sweeney.

“Again, though, we’re walking away from a long journey with no points.

“Individually, we’ve switched off in crucial moments in the game and ultimately it has cost us.

“Especially when you come to places like this, when you switch off and give those sorts of goals away it’s going to hurt you as it gets the crowd up.

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“For the first half-hour we had them on the back foot, you could sense it in the crowd, they were getting edgy.

“It’s just individual errors that have cost us, but we’ll get back on the training ground and keep working to rectify the mistakes.”

Sweeney said the lack of clean sheets was a collective responsibility, not just the defence.

“We had good chances but we’ve conceded three as well on the flip side - that’s nowhere near good enough,” he said.

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“We haven’t had as many clean sheets, nowhere near as many as what we wanted, so it’s a collective responsibility.

“When we score goals it’s collective, when we concede it’s collective.

“We’ve had numerous chances today but, to be fair to the boys up front, most of the season they’ve stuck it in for us. It just didn’t quite go for us today but at the same time we need to defend the box better than we did.

“When stuff like that happens, and it’s not quite dropping for you in the attacking third, we need to make sure we’re solid.

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“Unfortunately, we conceded soft goals again today and it sums up where we’re at.”

He added: “It's hard to put a finger on why we are conceding so many when we did so well last season defensively. It's more individual errors than anything that are costing us.

“Last season has been and gone. We can't look back. This season we've let ourselves down. But we still have another 18 games to try to salvage something out of the season.”