The Iron may have bowed out of the Checkatrade Trophy on Tuesday night following a 3-2 defeat away at Mansfield, but new signing Yasin Ben El-Mhanni was able to provide a bright spark for Scunthorpe by netting on his debut for the club.
He spoke to iFollow Iron following the game against the Stags and said about his goal: “It’s a really good feeling to be able to score on my debut for the club. I hope that now, I can go on and net many more for the team and hopefully help them do well. I was just happy that I could get out on the pitch and express myself to show what I can do.”
The 23-year-old showed some great skill and composure to skip past his man and work space on the edge of the area to create an opportunity to shoot and score.
Talking about the finish he went on to say: “There was a deflection on the shot which helped it on its way, but I think that I managed to work the right angle which allowed me to shoot. I dropped into the hole on the edge of the box and beat my player, then I lined up the effort and it went in.”
However, despite scoring on his first start in Scunthorpe colours, the creative midfielder was disappointed to get knocked out of the competition.
Mansfield found themselves with a two-goal advantage early on in the second-half, but strikes from Ben El-Mhanni and Andy Dales brought the Iron back into contention for a place in the next round, before the Stags sealed the victory moments after the Scunthorpe equaliser.
Ben El-Mhanni stated: “To be honest, I’m disappointed with the result. I wanted to stay in the cup and progress to show that we can do as well as possible, but that’s football and it happens.
“I think that we should have won the game because we were playing some good football at times and we managed to get ourselves back in the match by getting back on level terms.”
He added: “It’s very disappointing to go out of the competition as it is with any cup. I was actually looking at the time left on the clock when we scored and there wasn’t long left, only three minutes. Then, they went up the other end and scored straight away after the restart, so it wasn’t a very good feeling.”
Attentions turn back to the league on Saturday, as the Iron travel to Bristol Rovers in the second of two games this week and the midfielder hopes that Scunthorpe can grab all three points this weekend and bounce back from the disappointment of going out of the cup.
He said: “I’m hoping that we can go to Bristol Rovers and get that win we deserve on Saturday, that’s definitely the plan, but we’ll see what happens.
‘I don’t know too much about Bristol Rovers because I’ve never played against them before, but every football game is different, so we just need to focus on what we know that we can do and play our way.”
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