Matt Taylor feels Exeter are lacking energy after their promotion hopes suffered another blow against Mansfield at St James Park.

The two sides fought out a dire 0-0 draw with the point doing very little to help Exeter in their fight to reach the Sky Bet League Two play-offs.

Chances were few and far between on a bobbly pitch, and Grecians boss Taylor said: “It was difficult to create and difficult to open the opposition up.

“I thought we had more pace about us in the second half with Randell Williams on, but we never quite got the ball in the right position to be honest and on such a difficult surface, it is difficult to cut teams open.

“We had some moments, but not enough moments consistent enough and when we were trying to push forward at the end of the game, they had a little bit of pressure because they were trying to score on the counter-attack.

“I was pleased with a clean sheet, but we know we need more.

“We are a tired bunch at the moment. We have players with hamstring injuries and we had to make changes today because the players are running on empty. It is just a bit too much for this group of players, it is a young squad and we don’t have the depth.

“It’s all about picking up points right now. The effort is there, we are trying everything that we can, it is finding solutions to hurt the opposition.”

Mansfield boss Nigel Clough felt it was a great performance from his side, saying: “We restricted them to hardly anything in the game and had numerous chances ourselves.

“They had that one chance before half-time with the header. It was chucked into the box and Stoney has made a good save. Apart from that, I am struggling to think of much.

“We had good situations today to get the goal but if the penalty is given I think we win the game 1-0.

“It was a good, solid, sensible away performance where we restricted the opposition and created stuff ourselves. That is exactly the way we want to play away from home, not to be negative.

“That was the temptation to shut up shop a little bit, but we are not very good at that and I don’t want us to play like that. I still want us to be a threat and I still want us to try and score goals.

“We want to go toe-to-toe with the top teams, we won’t come and sit back, we will go forward and try and cause them problems. It’s against the bottom teams that we struggle.”