TRANMERE Rovers boss Micky Mellon is ready for a 'challenging' League Two clash with Stevenage at Prenton Park this weekend.

His team suffered a third successive defeat on Tuesday night, after they were beaten 2-1 by Northampton Town.

During a press conference at Rovers Solar Campus training ground this afternoon ahead of Saturday’s game, Mellon voiced his disappointment at the recent losses, adding that a quick return to winning ways was vital and his squad was 'well capable of pulling back the points' in a bid to reach the play-offs.

His squad, currently 10th on the table, drew 2-2 with Stevenage in their first game of the season.

Hoping for victory against Dino Maamria’s ninth on the table side, Mellon told the Globe: "They have done well, won a lot of games and are going to be tough to beat.

"They've got a good manager who I know very well and will have them all fired up.

"They will enjoy coming up to Tranmere and will be expecting to compete and do well.

"We will be ready to face that challenge.

"It's a massive three points and we’re ready for the challenge."

Reflecting on Tuesday’s defeat by Northampton Town and keen to close the eight-point gap separating his side from the play-off places, Mellon said: “We’ve lost games, so we’re disappointed about that and have to get back to clean sheets and getting the first goal.

“We don’t like losing games and, really, we have to acknowledge that.

“It’s important that we get a result quickly and that’s what we intend to do.

“We’ve worked hard over the last few days, like we always do, and we will look to be turning things around as quickly as possible.”

Assessing his squad’s performance so far this season, he continued: “We always want to try to get better and there’s always room for improvement.

“You move on from the ‘last exam’, last game, as we call it, and work forward from Tuesday.

“It’s important that I acknowledge my disappointment at losing games.

“There’s a gap between us and what we are trying to achieve, which at the start of the season was never in the plan to try and reach the play-offs.

“We didn’t have any plan other than to try to stay in the league. So any opportunity to do that has been good, but we’ve lost games recently.

“I’m very clear about the mistakes that we’re made within the games. They are the parts that we work on to try and move forward now.

“We don’t just bat off defeats and move on, we’re disappointed because we’ve let people down, have not performed well enough at certain points or reacted well enough at certain moments, so we try to find a way of doing that. We’re learning all of the time.

“Tranmere is a very proud place, we don’t accept getting beat at home. We will go into Saturday’s game with that mentality and will work on the things that will give us the chance to get a result.

“Every game is massive now.

"We want to make a good fist of an exciting end to the season.

“We don’t want it to fizzle out, we want it to get back on track and get that hope back in the building of another exciting push for promotion.

“We’re well capable of pulling back the points and will work hard to try to do that.”