Mansfield fans cheekily mock Luton with chants and Jack Wilshere apologises for his side’s 5-2 defeat on Sunday afternoon.
Two goals from Nathan Moriah-Welsh (17′, 28′) and Jon Russell (47′, 56′), and one from Louis Reed (45′) saw the Stags cruise to victory.
The Hatters did get two back, Nahki Wells with a penalty on the 78th minute, and then he got a second on the 92nd minute, but the damage was already done.
SHORTENED HIGHLIGHTS:
EXTENDED HIGHLIGHTS:
Jack Wilshere interview:
Interviewer: Jack, how much did Thursday night [defeat to Chelsea] take out of your players that produced this performance today?
Jack: Yeah, probably a lot. But yeah, we can’t use that as an excuse, yeah, we knew what we were coming into here, and we weren’t there. We weren’t there in the first half and I think you know we can’t… listen it’s been a while since since we’ve lost a game but you know I said the other day about ways to lose and what we can accept and yeah we’re not going to win every game but we we can’t accept that, not if we have ambition, yeah I’d like to to apologise to the fans because and their anger should be at me that’s fine but yeah, they’ve supported us a lot and we built a really big big connection with them and yeah, we lost on Thursday. I don’t care if it’s against Chelsea, that’s still the right way to lose where you’re trying, you’re fighting and we we didn’t show that today. So, yeah, hard to accept.
Interviewer: Can’t remember the last time you lost so many duals where you didn’t pick up men in the box, just outside the box. It was just sort of basic stuff, wasn’t it?
Jack: Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t I didn’t recognise I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen that. And you’re right. You say it’s been a while. I don’t think we… I’ve ever seen that. Yeah, like you said, maybe maybe the energy from Thursday was taken out of us. Maybe bringing players in that don’t really understand us, don’t know us, a new player starting the game maybe. And yeah, like I said, that’s on that’s on me. And um yeah, we can’t accept it.
FAN VLOG:
MANAGER INTERVIEWS:
Interviewer: The first half performance was a lot of bad. It was pretty much the whole team, wasn’t it? Donley struggled a bit today on debut.
Jack: Yeah, I think it’s tough tough for him to come into that um that fight and you know, I think we we played games like this and yeah, we’ve matched the fight and we’ve won the fight and then we earn the right to then have the ball. We never done that. We never earned the right to have the ball and we never had the momentum and we were still trying to play and find spaces that weren’t just there. So yeah, I think it’s difficult for him to come into that. I think he’ll she’ll learn a lot from it. Um but yeah, he he definitely wasn’t um yeah, it could have been anyone that was brought at half time.
Interviewer: Was an attacking team you lined up with and midfield battle didn’t really win that. That was where it was won.
Jack: Well, I think battles all over the pitch to be honest. I think yeah I think like I said there’s there’s games where we’ve gone gone about these types of games where we’ve gone about it in a certain way and just because we play attacking players doesn’t mean that you know we don’t have to win the fight or win jewels like we have to earn the right and this league demands that and yeah we didn’t do that today and yeah that hurts.
Interviewer: You’re critical of yourself sometimes aren’t you? You’ll have look at this back and think did I did I make the right calls here on this one?
Jack: Yeah. I always look in my mirror first and that’s why I apologise to the fans. Um but yeah, they’ll be there’s always every week even when we win, you know, there’s some decisions I don’t get right and yeah, there’ll definitely be some today.
Interviewer: Doesn’t get any easier, does it? Cuz these games keep rolling on.
Jack: No, no, it doesn’t. And that’s the league. That’s what that’s what we know. And that’s why we we work so hard in pre-season to make sure that we can go Saturday, Tuesday, or Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday. And we’re going to have to do that. We got a big game on Wednesday now that is against a different type of opposition, but a type of opposition that is league one. Like we’re going to have to fight. We’re going to have to win our duals. We’re going to have to run. We’re going to have to track our runners. We’re going to have to make sure before we do anything that we outwork and we we outfight them and yeah, that was probably the run we’ve been on. That was the big reason why we went on that run because we were able to do that. Outwork, out fight, win our duals, then we got good players. We know that we got good players that can hurt our position. And if you show that you’re you’re going to win the fight and kill opposition spirit, then yeah, you can show you’re a good player, but you have to earn that.
Nigel Clough interview:
Interviewer: Nigel, what a terrific game of football. What’s your immediate analysis after this 5-2 win?
Nigel: Yeah, it was. I thought we were outstanding for long long spells of the game today and I actually thought we deserve to be 5-0 up at that stage and we started the game brilliantly. were very much aware uh you know of Luton being at Chelsea just three days ago and whatever people say it makes a difference you know and just saying to the staff before the game I think if we’d have got through in the cup we’d have had a game this last week on the Tuesday or the Wednesday we’d have got 11 players out but not much after that you know David McGoldrick wouldn’t have been ready Lucas wouldn’t have been ready Oates wouldn’t have been ready Frazer wouldn’t have been ready and we’d have barely got 11 players out so there is a slight benefit never like getting knocked out but there has been a benefit and we’ve seen it.
Interviewer: With that said, you were very worthy winners and you set off at breakneck speed.
Nigel: Yeah, we did. And the nicest thing as well is we we try and train like that and training’s been excellent this week as it is most of the time, but we’re just trying to get them to take it into games and probably that was the closest it’s been to how we train and how we want to play taking it into the game today against a very very good team and I think Walsh and Palmer especially Palmer absolutely major major threats at this level.
See more in his interview below…
