Mansfield Town look to extend winning streak when they face Salford City at the One Call Stadium

The Stags will look to build on their impressive home win last time out against Port Vale when they face promotion-chasing Salford City at the One Call Stadium.

Mansfield Town are hoping that they can extend their winning streak to three-in-a-row and to win back-to-back home games after they secured a very impressive 4-0 victory over Port Vale at the weekend.

It didn’t take long for the Stags to go in front as Ollie Clarke scored within the first minute of the game to secure his first Stags goal and to give Mansfield a very early lead in the encounter.

Just after the half-hour mark, the men in amber and blue made it 2-0. George Maris whipped in an inviting ball which was failed to be cleared away by the Port Vale defence. The ball fell to Jordan Bowery as he smashed the ball into the back of the net.

With 15 minutes to go, Bowery doubled his tally for the afternoon and tripled Mansfield’s lead. Harry Charsley was fouled in the penalty area and the forward dispatched the subsequent penalty.

Not too long after the forward completed his hat-trick with a fine finish into the bottom corner. Ten players in amber and blue were involved in the move as the only player that wasn’t, Mal Benning, created space off the ball which allowed for the forward to run onto Clarke’s pass and shoot the ball into the goal off of the post.

That win allowed the Stags to pick up their first win in 2020 and their first home win of 2020/21 League Two season in a fabulous display at the One Call Stadium.

Salford City go into this fixture on the back of a defeat after a five-game unbeaten run was ended by Leyton Orient as the London side went on to narrowly beat the Ammies 1-0 at the Breyer Group Stadium.

Danny Johnson’s goal in the 31st minute secured the victory for Orient as they moved level on points with Salford but have played two games more than the side in eighth-place in League Two.

It will definitely be a tough task for the Stags to beat Salford, but League Two football is very unpredictable and Clough will hope to make a statement by beating a top seven contender like the Ammies at the One Call Stadium.

Mansfield Town have only faced Salford once as the visitors were only promoted into League Two from the National League in 2019 after securing their promotion into the Football League via the play-offs by beating AFC Fylde 3-0 at Wembley in the Final.

The last encounter between the two sides saw the then newly-promoted side travelled to the One Call Stadium to play their one and only encounter in the 2019/20 season which was cut short due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

After Mansfield experienced a fantastic start to their October in the 2019/20 season by beating Grimsby Town 1-0 at Blundell Park, smashing Oldham Athletic 6-1 at the One Call Stadium and drawing 2-2 at the New Lawn with Forest Green Rovers. It was then Salford’s turn to face the Stags.

The first half was uneventful as it ended 0-0 and the game still had all to play for as it entered the second half. The Ammies played their cards well and jumped into the lead three minutes in the second period as Jake Jervis buried the ball past Conrad Logan.

Salford’s top goalscorer that season, Adam Rooney, made it two for the visitors in the 65th minute as they grabbed the games by the horns.

Nicky Maynard was able to grab one goal back for the Stags with 13 minutes to go, but it wasn’t enough for the amber and blues to come back as they fell to their first defeat in three games.

Mansfield will want to rewrite history and get one back on Salford as the Stags look to gain some consistency in their game and may try to break Salford’s unbeaten run with a shock result.

The Nottinghamshire club will look to turn to confidence-growing Jordan Bowery after he grabbed his sixth goal of the season and looks to be keeping that goalscoring streak going after his hat-trick in the 4-0 win over Port Vale.

The central midfield partnership of George Lapslie and captain Ollie Clarke will also be key for the Stags in making everything flow and using their vision and passing ability to take all three points for Mansfield.

Salford will hope that Ashley Hunter is on top form and continuing to fire in goal contributions. The midfielder is the Ammies joint top-goalscorer with James Wilson on six goals and their joint-top assister alongside Ian Henderson and Ibou Touray on three assists each.

A lot of the praise has to go to the backline and especially their goalkeeper Vaclav Hladky. Salford have kept the most amount of clean sheets in League Two (10) and it is due to that man that the stats stands in their favour.

Having played 20 out of 20 league matches he’s made 61 saves which is 3.1 saves per game on average and is the sixth highest in League Two and they’ve only been faced with two penalties in the current season with Hladky saving both.

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