Shropshire Star

It was a case of over-relaxing at the weekend as Town lost 3-1 to relegation-threatened Mansfield.

Despite the perfect start, the team just didn’t seem at the races on Saturday.

Something I feared that would happen actually did happen – the players had it in their mind that they were safe from relegation and they didn’t match Mansfield’s work ethic.

Town must have realised that Mansfield were going to fight for their lives and were going to do everything they could to win, but that didn’t stop us putting in a lacklustre performance, especially in the first half.

It’s a good job the team are all but safe from relegation. I would like to think if we needed to win the match to stay up, then the performance and result would have been different.

I think the players have reached the same stage as the fans - they just want the season to end, and that clearly showed.

I’m afraid it was the man I wanted us to sign in January that was the difference between the sides.

Michael Boulding is the type of striker that we have been crying out for, and for him to score the amount of goals he has done for a team who are second from bottom is very impressive. But would he have wanted to come to us?

So what next? A derby match against Chester and a tricky away game against Rochdale.

What I would like to see in those two matches is the players fighting for their lives and fighting as though their futures at the club depended on it.

Lets hope we will repeat the performance we showed against Wrexham rather than that we showed against Mansfield at the weekend.

Off the pitch, well done to Richard Barnett for picking up the award for League Two groundsman of the year.

It’s an award he fully deserves following the near-impossible task he had at the old ground of trying to keep it in a good condition.

By James Pugh