Brabin knows how to put Wednesday night right

A lack of ruthlessness in front of goal again cost his side, although Brabin felt Town created enough chances to win it on the night.

He said: “We’ve certainly delved deep into how we can improve things and we are working hard 24/7 to put that right.

“One of the things I spoke about after the game the other night was our intelligence in the final third, being a little bit braver with our passing and movement in the final third to create a few more openings.

“Mansfield are again an ex-League club. They’ve got their expectations and that’s the way they set up. A big, strong physical side and they’ve got some good players and that’s the way they play, we weren’t shocked with the way they played.

“From our point of view and the group of players we’ve got, we know we should have created a lot more. But having said that we’ve hit the crossbar and had four really good chances.

“With (Aaron) O’Connor going through and the keeper’s made a good save, one v one, (Craig) McAllster’s had a good chance after turning and getting a strike in and is disappointed he hasn’t hit the target.

“There’s one where Greg Taylor’s come on and has hit it straight at the keeper and (Danny) Crow with the keeper. We look at them as really good chances.

“I’ve spoken all season about being ruthless and we’ve certainly scored a lot of goals of late and needed one on Wednesday night.”

But he still believes the Hatters are capable of claiming automatic promotion this season, although understands the fans’ frustrations as the full time whistle on Saturday was greeted by a murmur of boos.

Brabin added: “I can understand the disappointment. You talk about clawing points back from the top two and it’s always going to be frustrating and disappointing when we are not getting maximum points from games and that’s certainly the case.

“But I don’t think we are in a crisis. The number one objective is to get promotion and we are still on course, on track for that.

“We know things aren’t perfect at the moment. But one thing we do know is how to put that right. We know the reasons why we’re not probably as near to the top was we should be and we are working hard to put that right.

“There’s not much room for error in this league and we’ve certainly witnessed that. I think we’ve dropped a lot of points just before Christmas, that was probably our most disappointing period where we’ve dropped most of the points and made it a little bit harder.

“We are certainly all focused and concentrating totally on the number one objective which is to get us out of this league.

“We’ve just got to keep driving forward, improving and we want to keep winning football matches and that’s important.

“We know it’s not perfect at the moment but we know the reasons for that and like I said we are disappointed we are so many points off the top two but there is still a fair way to go and we’ve just got to keep improving and keep picking up points.

“The lads get disappointed because they realise what’s at stake. They realise there’s a big expectancy on them to get promoted this season.

“We want to try and play football and you get teams that are going to park the bus in front of their goal to make it difficult for us and that’s something we’ve got to match the opposition’s workrate, strength and we’ve got to be a little bit brighter, a little bit more intelligent.”