Mansfield Town face Morecambe at home in Sky Bet League Two

Mansfield Town host Morecambe at the One Call Stadium in both sides second game of the Sky Bet League Two season.

Mansfield Town will look to impress in front of their home crowd as they look to stay unbeaten in the league, where as for Morecambe they will look to bounce back from a defeat last game.

In the last fixture, Mansfield were 2-0 down away at Newport and were able to bounce back after four minutes in the second-half to draw the game level at 2-2.

Morecambe were at home playing Grimsby Town and after a stellar first-half from the Shrimps they collapsed in concentration in the second-half aw them concede two goals and consequently lost the game.

Team news

The Stags will be without long-term absentees Craig Davies (ankle) and Bobby Olejnik (knee) for Saturday’s game. Frontman Jordan Graham will also be absent from the squad.

The game will likely come too soon for wing-back Hayden White.

Midfielder Willem Tomlinson, who suffered minor knee ligament damage in our clash with Blackburn Rovers in pre-season, will also miss out.

Fellow midfield man Jacob Mellis is suspended for Saturday’s match.

The Shrimps will be without A-Jay Leitch-Smith at One Call Stadium.

John Dempster

Mansfield Town boss John Dempster spoke about how ‘immensely proud’ he is to managing his team for the first time at the One Call Stadium.

“[I’ll feel] immense pride [on Saturday]. I’m looking forward to it, as it’ll be a real battle. It’s a massive achievement for any manager to manage his football club and I’m no different.

“It’ll be a very proud moment for me, but I know I have a job to do and the team have a job to do. We’ll be trying to get all three points on Saturday.

“We certainly want to be attacking at home and take the game to the opposition, but we’ll also be aware of opponents’ strengths as well.”

Jim Bentley

Morecambe manager Jim Bentley spoke about the disappointing defeat at the hands of Grimsby and about his optimism going into the game.

“I thought the game had 0-0 written all over about it. It wasn’t a great game. Everyone tried to do the right thing but it just didn’t click and neither side had a real chance to be honest.

“The game changed on the free kick and I will take the blame for the that. You have to have a lot of different things in your armoury and the free kick routine has been something we have USED since I played under Jim Harvey and apart from when we were let down by an official last year it has always worked.

“This time it didn’t though and that proved the critical moment.”

Head-to-head

In the last five games between these clubs in League Two, Mansfield have not been beaten by Morecambe and will be looking to continue that run of form against the Shrimps.

Expected line-ups

Mansfield Town XI: Conrad Logan; Ryan Sweeney, Krystian Pearce, Matt Preston; Mal Benning, Neal Bishop, Alex MacDonald, Otis Khan, Kellan Gordon; Danny Rose, Nicky Maynard.

Morecambe XI: Barry Roche; Adam Buxton, Sam Lavelle, Steven Old, Luke Conlan; Alex Kenyon, Aaron Wildig; John O’Sullivan, Lewis Alessandra, Rhys Oates; Shaun Miller.