Notts County boss Ian Burchnall has outlined the work his side need to do following the late 2-1 defeat to Grimsby Town in the National League at Meadow Lane at the weekend.
The hosts opened the scoring through Callum Roberts in the first half before Ryan Taylor levelled matters in the 76th minute.
Luke Waterfall stole all three points during stoppage time as the Magpies fell to their sixth defeat this season.
Given the result, it is a missed opportunity for Notts to move closer to the top-six and edge closer to the play-off places.
The 38-year-old boss admitted to feeling "disappointed" with the outcome and outlined what his side need to do better in coming games, starting with the visit of Barnet to Meadow Lane on Tuesday night (7.45pm kick-off).
"I think first half in my opinion we should be out of sight but when we're not, we have to find the right way especially against good teams like Grimsby," he said.
"They're going to have their periods and they were excellent second half, they were very good and that's credit to them, they came here and pressed us so well.
"We didn't find the solutions but then when we have to be able to hang on and be able to accept the other team has come into the game and is playing well but now we've got to grind out what we need.
"We've had a great start to the season then there was three games where it was a poor week and this week feels a bit like that. We responded so well from those three games and went on a run of really strong performances against top teams.
"We've had a bad week, we feel disappointed with the return of the three games but now we have to respond like we did during the season after those three performances we didn't get any results and now I use this as a springboard to push us now because it's a disappointing return and we've got to work extremely hard now.
"Tuesday night [against Barnet], we're going to go a lot of games in quick succession so we just need to get into a rhythm now."
Having two games in hand and currently 12 points from promotion hopeful Stockport, Burchnall admitted it is not something he pays much attention to.
"I don't think too much about where we need to be now," he added. "We have to play those two games in hand, then we have to play everybody around us.
"We certainly need to improve our performance level from what we did in the second half, to be more consistent with what we did in the first half an hour, we can do that. I think we can take points against teams around us, we can be up and around it.
"We're chasing it a little bit now and we've got to dig in on Tuesday to make sure we get a good result and then hopefully that get us towards the play-offs and we go from there."
