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Reaction to the Mansfield victory
By Nathan Jackson August 19 2007
It's about time we put in a commendable performance, City haven't played well in a single game since March but new talent and one of the old guard changed everything around. After a poor opening 2 games we have finally got our season under way and it also saw a successful return to the way we used to play decent football, and it opened up the Stags defence many times.

Firstly, let me just start by saying that as good as this performance was we won't come up against a side as poor as Mansfield anytime soon. I predicted them to finish bottom a while back and their performance today justifies my selection process for who will relegated. They barely troubled a defence that had been leakier than a sieve and any team that doesn't create decent chances will probably go down.

One of the reasons they didn't create chances was Adie Moses. His absense towards the end of last season coincided with our defence falling to pieces and I specifically highlighted this after the 5-3 defeat to Bristol Rovers in the Playoffs. His steady head and general command of the area often went unnoticed last season but if he can remain injury free then I am sure our defence will finally stop leaking as many goals as it has done recently.

It is hard to pick out other players individually for praise because this victory was a team effort, but Jamie Hand deserves a lot of recognition for putting in a solid performance on his debut. Sitting just in front of defence (The same job that Kerr is supposed to do apparantly) helped the backline out when they were occasionally in trouble and Kerr will do well to get back into the squad on the back of Hand's first performance.

N'Guessan put in easily his best performance in a City shirt and because of him we gave Mansfield a slap in the face after they scored instantly. Playing down the left he put in a hell of a lot more effort than Jeff Hughes ever did (not the hardest thing in the world to overcome) and if he can replicate that kind of performanceevery week then we're laughing.

Finally, today proved that you shouldn't break Stallard and Forrester up. Together they are deadly but seperately they aren't effective. They linked up well and Forrester was unlucky not to score his second of the season, however, Stallard's goal was pure class and already a contentder for finish of the season.

There's not a lot else for me to say really, there's nothing really worth ranting about this week. So hopefully we can achieve a similar performance against Accrington Stanley next week, but if they're anywhere near as bad as Mansfield were then we're going to be laughing.

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