Grimsby Town must learn lessons to stay in promotion race, says Shaun Pearson

SHAUN Pearson says Grimsby Town's players must learn lessons from the defeat to Macclesfield if they are to realise their ambitions this season.

The centre-half said that his side were guilty of 'sloppiness' against the Silkmen; conceding a late penalty that saw the Mariners lose the game.

He remains confident that Town can live up to their tag of genuine promotion contenders, but insists they have to cut out mistakes if they are to be in the mix at the end of the season.

He said: "Our job is to keep a clean sheet and we conceded a sloppy, sloppy goal on Saturday so we were all frustrated.

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"I know it's from a penalty and there's a bit of luck that he's made it into the box, but when we get an attacking set piece we can't be as exposed as we were – that's something for us to work on.

"It's not the first time that we've conceded from our own set piece either and it's just not good enough. We've got to sharpen up with that.

"I don't think there was a lot wrong apart from that moment of sloppiness, which is the frustrating thing.

"If we perform like that over the course of the season, we know that we won't be too far away, but it's not time to rest on our laurels – we need to learn from it.

"We've got a good group of honest players and they will feel hurt by the Macclesfield result instead of just going away thinking 'it's alright, we did enough anyway'.

"We know that it's alright saying we've dominated the game, but we still have to keep switched on defensively."

The defeat means that the Mariners are now without a win at Blundell Park in their last three games.

Pearson says if they can couple a tighter defensive display with the sort of attacking verve that they showed, their next home win won't be too far away.

"It's the third home defeat in a row and we know we've got to work on that," he added. "Playing at home is very different to playing away, where we can sit back on teams and hit them on the counter.

"At home there is more onus on us to go out and beat sides, so it becomes more difficult, but we've got to learn to deal with that, and quickly, if we want to be in the top five at the end of the season.

"I think the second half is probably the best we've played in an attacking sense and we created numerous opportunities.

"If we continue to perform like that it won't be long before we turn those home performances into wins."