Law takes heart from display against Mansfield as new season dawns

The difference between the Gladiators and Mansfield Town was primarily down to what happened in front of goal, with Mansfield taking the chances presented to them and Matlock unable to take the openings they created.

But Law said that Saturday’s opener at Prescot Cables will be the true gauge of the progress made during the summer.

He said: “We’ve played friendlies against the National League champions and two clubs promoted to the Championship and League One respectively and those games showed good signs – the one let down was the game against Cleethorpes last week.

"I said to the players that against a strong Mansfield side, we lost the game purely due to the mistakes we made that they punished, and the fact they defended well and denied us during our good moments. If you look at just the chances, we probably had the better ones, but goals win games and that’s the difference.

"Even after the Cleethorpes game I still wasn’t too downhearted as we knew we needed more personnel and where we needed to improve, and it’s similar tonight having played a really good side.

"We made better decisions with the ball and have been good in possession, and we looked more of a threat. But you can play as well as you want and get as much ball as you want but you can’t keep giving goals away.”

Matlock’s opener will be on Merseyside against a Prescot side promoted back to step three at the end of last season after eight years in Division One.

And Law says his players are well prepared for what’s to come.

He said: “We know what’s coming and it’ll be a different challenge on Saturday. We need to be more aggressive and more assertive – that’s not to say we go round kicking everybody, more that before the ball comes into the box you’ve got to be organising each other and encouraging each other to get a head on the ball and blocks in, because at the minute we just seem a bit nice, but that will come.

"When I came in we started pre-season with three players, which soon became two when John Johnston left. So we quickly had to find 16-odd players, so it’s been a challenging pre-season and while I get why we play these prestige friendlies given the financial rewards which you’d be silly not to take advantage of, it’s not been an ideal pre-season from a playing and managing perspective and ideally we’d have liked to have played more teams from our kind of level.

"But we’ve dealt with it, it is what it is now and we go forward to Saturday.”