Unstoppable Mansfield travel to mid-table Oldham Athletic

With only three games left in the Sky Bet League Two season, the Stags travel to Oldham with Mansfield Town being in a very good position to finish in the top three and get automatically promoted to League One.

The Stags have played fantastic football lately and it really was shown on Friday against Morecambe at the One Call Stadium.

Midfielders Jorge Grant and Jacob Mellis returned to first team football, and it was the latter who opened the scoring for the amber and blues in the 30 minute. A strong second-half followed and another three goals added to give the Stags a 4-0 home win. Goals from captain Krystian Pearce, winger CJ Hamilton and full-back Mal Benning sealed the three points for Mansfield Town. Mansfield Town manager David Flitcroft was delighted with the attacking prowess that his team showed in the incredible home victory.

He said:

“Courage is about getting on the ball and making angles. We didn’t do that against Northampton. But everyone wanted the ball today and were making angles for each other.

“In the first-half we were brilliant, we seemed to attack them from every angle possible. We were unlucky not have more going in [at half-time]. We attacked with that vigour and a real verve.

“It pleases you when you see elements of what you’ve done in the week go into the game. It was an emphatic win and one that the players and the supporters fully deserved.”

Oldham also played their last league fixture on Friday they faced Cheltenham away from home. Oldham have also being playing really impressive football having won three out of the last five league matches.

A very tightly contested match which could have seen either team score and win the game, ended in a 0-0 point with both teams taking the one point away from this fixture. Oldham Athletic head coach Pete Wild admitted that despite controlling the game against Cheltenham his side just lacked that cutting edge as they went five games unbeaten.

He said:

“I felt we controlled large parts of the game, I thought we dominated the ball and when we didn’t have the ball we had control of the game.

“So we were really happy with how we did that in the match we just couldn’t get over the line.

“We huffed and puffed, we tried putting some legs on there, even put Rob Hunt on, on the right hand side to just try and give us some legs and see if we could get a winner with some pace and unfortunately it didn’t work for us.”

The last time both teams played against each other was in October at the One Call Stadium. Even though Mansfield dominated the whole game and Oldham rarely threatened Mansfield’s goalkeeper Bobby Olejnik the score finished 0-0 with both teams taking a point each from the fixture.

Team News 

The Stags will be without forwards Craig Davies, Nicky Ajose and Jordan Graham for the match.

Long-term absentees Bobby Olejnik and Hayden White will also miss out.

The Latics will be without Dan Gardner and Ousmane Fane for the game.