Mansfield Town travel to Carlisle as they hunt first league win

Mansfield Town will travel to Carlisle as they search for that first league win to kick start their campaign after two draws in their last two games.

Going into this fixture, Carlisle beat Barnsley 3-0 in the Carabao Cup and cruised into the second round. For Mansfield, a draw in 90 minutes saw the Stags and Morecambe go into a penalty-shootout where the Shrimps won 6-5 after a Ryan Sweeney penalty that went over the bar saw the Stags make a shock first round exit.

Team news

Mansfield will be without long-term absentees Craig Davies and Bobby Olejnik for the clash.

Midfield man Jacob Mellis, alongside defender Matt Preston, are suspended for the game.

The Blues have a clean bill of health heading into Saturday’s fixture, after striker Hallam Hope returned to action in Tuesday’s 3-0 win away to Championship side Barnsley.

United boss Steven Pressley more than hinted at his press conference that he is in the final stages of his chase to pin down a loan striker following weeks of patience and tenacity in the pursuit of his top targets.

“It’s likely to happen before the weekend and we’re really pleased that we’ve got him. This was a target I’ve been pursuing for five or six weeks now, a bit like the other target.

I’d say about a week ago we felt this particular target was gone because we thought the situation was that he was going to move to another club on a loan deal. That fell through and obviously that puts things in our favour again.

He’s somebody I’ve pursued for a long time, pretty much from day one of pre-season, so we’re delighted that it looks like it’s coming to fruition. I’ve said before that it’s a long season and we’ll need all of the good players to be involved.”

Manager John Dempster has called for his players to ‘fight for every inch’ in this weekend’s Sky Bet League Two clash against in-form Carlisle United.

“To concede two goals again was very disappointing. There will be a discussion before training [today], but talk is cheap, so we need to put things in action.

Carlisle are in good form and they had an excellent result against Barnsley in midweek. Steven Pressley has changed quite a lot there and he was a player I admired.

He’s changed the way Carlisle play and the personnel from last season. We know we’ll be going there and it will be a very tough challenge, which it always is when you go to Carlisle. We need to be at our very best to go there and get anything.”

Head-to-head

Mansfield go into this game with a good record against the Cumbrians with Stags winning three of the last five meetings against the Blues with the other games ending in a 1-1 draw and a 3-2 win for Carlisle back in January this year.