David Artell said Stafford Rangers are 'a good team who I expect will get promoted this season and won’t be far off the National League'

Lessons were learned by Grimsby Town against Stafford Rangers that head coach David Artell hopes they will not quickly forget about.

The Mariners had a near miss at the weekend, in avoiding an upset at the hands of the lowest ranked side in the first round of the FA Cup, as they went away from the key elements of their performance from recent league showings.

It was certainly a reminder to never underestimate your opponent, particularly in the cup football setting and Stafford showed the best version of themselves which was almost enough to beat a Town team that they caught cold from kick-off.

Artell explained: “You’ve got to put it all into perspective and understand that they are playing above their level. They’re a good team who I expect will get promoted this season and won’t be far off the National League.

“They are much closer to league football than their current position suggests so for us, we’ve always got to make sure that we don’t just play well because we’re against York and then think whatever because it's Stafford, or one of the less fancied teams in our league.

“We’ve reset a standard with our performances against Rochdale, Gillingham and York recently and we want to stay on that path. The performance here was okay once we made some changes but we gave ourselves a mountain to climb through our mentality at the start.”

The argument could be made that the factors around the game had a negative impact on the team’s performance, whether it be the cup fever, the raised stage of a national TV game, the playing conditions or their opponents’ fearless approach as the clear underdogs.

Artell is not in the excuses business though and in order for his players to learn from the experience he needs them to know where they went wrong.

On the conditions of the game having an impact, he stated: “You can say 'yes' to that, but how of an impact that should really have, for me, that should be negligible but then maybe I’m a bit older and wiser than some of them.

“It’s not an excuse, we’ve got to play much better and we have done in recent weeks which is why we are where we are in the league. The fact is that we can’t play like that no matter what the elements of the game are.”

Having gone through a gruelling 120-minute battle on a heavy non-league surface on Sunday, the Mariners are back in action again on Tuesday evening as they host Nottingham Forest U21s in the Jersey Mike’s Trophy.

With a long trip to face Swindon Town in the league to follow next Saturday, Artell will have to preserve some legs and he is not best pleased with how the games have lined up this week, with not a whole lot of time to debrief on Stafford.

“It’s obviously not ideal,” added the Town boss on the schedule. “But Forest weren’t on board with changing the date which I can sort of understand from their side. That said I think if we went to the PFA and said we’re having to play two games in three days then they would have something to say about it.

“We’re not going down those roads, but it is silly. It is what it is, so we’ll pick a team that gives us the best chance of winning at Swindon, and that’s the reality of it.”