Dean Wilkins says it is important that Stevenage take their 3-1 defeat at Exeter City as a blip and nothing more serious than that.

The assistant manager was in charge for Boro's trip to the south west and despite a late Elliot List goal giving them hopes of salvaging a point, their positive recent run came to an end.

He said: "We’ve been doing OK lately. We’ve been trying to develop a style of play which suits the players that we’ve got so the last four league games with two wins and two draws has been a really good start.

"But we got bogged down today. We had some good possession through the middle third and the opportunity to play a final pass and we didn’t execute it well enough or we turned it down and went backwards.

"That’s really disappointing from our perspective as it gives the opposition a lift, you’re not making them defend as much as they should be."

And he pointed to problems in both boxes as being the main disappointment to come out of the loss.

He said: "We need to be more clinical. We had two really good chances in the first 10 minutes but we’ve made them look like they are not chances because we haven’t made the keeper work.

"When we get chances we have to take them.

"Matty Stevens made a difference. He’ll get in behind if we give him the right service and the keeper made a good save from him.

"We left ourselves open at the back in the last 15 minutes because we are chasing it but if I look at their goals, they are disappointing.

"We have to work harder to stop shots getting off against us.

"Both boxes have made a difference but it is important we don’t lose focus and go off plan and do something radically different. It doesn't need that.

"We need to nail down the details in and out of possession and we need to make sure that this is just a blip and doesn’t become the norm. It is in our hands."

He also explained Alex Revell's absence.

"He’s just unwell and with everything going on it is just precautionary," said Wilkins. "We can’t take any risks.

"He was watching from home and on the phone to Mark Sampson."