A Novel affair. Home to Mansfield Town Tues 3rd Dec. 1945

[TANGODANCER]

Time to think football:

Jane Austen had never seen a football match when she wrote Mansfield Park because the sport hadn't even been invented back then, but she may well have had a view on Pride and Prejudice if she had watched today's games because both are alive and well in League One. . Five points behind us means Mansfield still can't catch us with a win, but they'll surely be trying, and we could certainly do with three points here at the Unibol, Tuesday night.

Knowing little about current Mansfield except it is in Nottinghamshire and boasts Nigel Clough as the sherrif of the merry men (if you will),his dad was also boss of the Forest if not Sherwood.(R.I.P.) I'll leave you to fire a few arrows into the December sky then, so.go forth, and stand by to repel outlaws.

[Bertie Wooster]

2-1 Mansfield, it will be all Mansfield but we will have a 15-20 min spell in the game at some stage where we will actually play some higher tempo, higher intensity football, attacking football - this will either be the 1st 15-20 mins or the last 15-20 mins and the rest of the game will be the usual slow as feck, turgid, boring, send the fans to sleep side to side crab football as we have seen on a very regular basis since Jan 2024.

Actual attending crowd will be a max of 13,000 - 14,000, club will say 19,500

[Mar]

I think this will be one of those that we win and we play relatively well, which only promotes our struggle.

We've left a squad space open for a new signing before the transfer window. Cometh the Brett Ormerod off the bench as our extra striker.

[Worthy4England]

Nil against doesn't feel a great bet - so 2-1 Whites.

[boltonboris]

1-1 draw in front of 12,000 (sorry, 20,000) hardy, bored souls

As pathetic as it sounds, if the weather is anything like it was this morning, or last Saturday, I may not bother. Roof was leaking right above me last week and I was absolutely feckin drenched

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

1-1 draw in front of 12,000 (sorry, 20,000) hardy, bored souls

As pathetic as it sounds, if the weather is anything like it was this morning, or last Saturday, I may not bother. Roof was leaking right above me last week and I was absolutely feckin drenched

Leaking roof is now generally accepted as a pathetic-fallacy harbinger of footballing doom. Ask Ten Hag.

[Harry Genshaw]

Nil against doesn't feel a great bet - so 2-1 Whites.

Came on here to say exactly that.

They looked pretty decent in the league cup game but tailed off a bit lately. Think we'll win but it'll be close. 2-1

[boltonboris]

1-1 draw in front of 12,000 (sorry, 20,000) hardy, bored souls

As pathetic as it sounds, if the weather is anything like it was this morning, or last Saturday, I may not bother. Roof was leaking right above me last week and I was absolutely feckin drenched

Leaking roof is now generally accepted as a pathetic-fallacy harbinger of footballing doom. Ask Ten Hag.

Aye. 9th tallest waterfall in England is now situated in BL6. And Ian's gonna have to dive from it to prove himself to me

[Bertie Wooster]

1-1 draw in front of 12,000 (sorry, 20,000) hardy, bored souls

As pathetic as it sounds, if the weather is anything like it was this morning, or last Saturday, I may not bother. Roof was leaking right above me last week and I was absolutely feckin drenched

Leaking roof is now generally accepted as a pathetic-fallacy harbinger of footballing doom. Ask Ten Hag.

Aye. 9th tallest waterfall in England is now situated in BL6. And Ian's gonna have to dive from it to prove himself to me

No he's more likely to employ Gary Taylor-Fletcher as roofing manager.

[boltonboris]

1-1 draw in front of 12,000 (sorry, 20,000) hardy, bored souls

As pathetic as it sounds, if the weather is anything like it was this morning, or last Saturday, I may not bother. Roof was leaking right above me last week and I was absolutely feckin drenched

Leaking roof is now generally accepted as a pathetic-fallacy harbinger of footballing doom. Ask Ten Hag.

Aye. 9th tallest waterfall in England is now situated in BL6. And Ian's gonna have to dive from it to prove himself to me

No he's more likely to employ Gary Taylor-Fletcher as roofing manager.

He's a good, honest lad to be fair

[Prufrock]

He looks the part, tbf.

[Frank Drebin]

Mansfield played away in the cup on Saturday, whilst we are fully rested. What could possibly go wrong!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Mansfield at home is a must-win.

We've played 7 league games against teams now in the top half. We beat Reading 5-2 but apart from that we're D1 L5, F0 A15.

Oh and in 11 home games (all comps), we've scored 5 first-half goals - but 4 were against Reading. Nine times we've reached the oranges without scoring. Under the circs I think the home crowd has been quiet patient.

[TANGODANCER]

Clean slate and fresh start. Make believe this is our first game and put the rest in the cupoard. Talking doesn't win games, only goals, scored and prevented, so let's get positive and just get three points. The rest is just so much hyperbole. I'm a big Jane Austen fan but Mansfield Park is fiction: this is reality. Go forth and give it a happy ending.

[HMX]

2-1. Our winner coming in the last 5 mins

[The_Gun]

Thomason suspended for this one?

[officer_dibble]

Thomason suspended for this one?

Yeah
Matete and Sheehan will play, probably McAtee back in the attacking mid role.

[The_Gun]

Thomason suspended for this one?

Yeah
Matete and Sheehan will play, probably McAtee back in the attacking mid role.

Oh great, he’s worked perfectly there previously…

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Good time to be playing Mansfield. Though they started the season well - they were 4th on Oct 22 - they haven't won in the league since. They haven't been terrible, drawing 1-1 with Birmingham and losing 1-0 to each of Wrexham, Bristol Rovers and Wycombe (and winning in each available cup against Newcastle U21, Curzon Ashton and Stevenage in the meantime), but those three successive goalfree returns are a concern. Not unrelatedly, Lee Gregory, who'd scored 7 goals in 12 league games, is injured, leaving Will Evans (5 from 15) as the only Stag on more than 2 league goals.

Will be interesting to watch Keanu Baccus, the Aussie defensive midfielder we were linked with in summer 2023 (when he was at St Mirren) before pulling out. He moved to Mansfield a year later and although he's played 15 times he's yet to make more than three successive starts and has only once lasted the full 90. He was an unused sub in the League Cup game we won.

As I noted above, beating Mansfield would be only the second time we'd beaten a (current) top-half team, which – along with regular humiliations - is part of the reason that not many of us are cock-a-hoop about the recent reasonable points haul. December games against Mansfield (currently 10th), Bristol Rovers (14th), Wigan (15th but living rent-free in our heads), Wycombe (1st), Barnsley (6th) and Lincoln (9th) will give us a much more accurate idea where we're at. Whether it will change minds in the cheap seats or the poshest ones remains to be seen.

[Mar]

Good write up as always DSB.

Beating Mansfield may represent beating a top half team, but they're firmly midtable as it stands and may possibly end up being bottom half in no time at all given their current form, so even a win wouldn't necessarily scream back on track.

It's a must win if we're going to be getting into the top places.