Mansfield Town

Our contracted goalkeepers, Alan Marriott and Ian Deakin, are likely to be unavailable beyond tomorrow’s match at Accrington Stanley.

Price (pictured), who joined us on an initial seven-day deal from the Eagles last week, kept goal in our fabulous 3-0 win over Rochdale at One Call Stadium last Saturday.

He added: “I think it’ll be tough for ‘Maz’ (Alan Marriott) or ‘Deaks’ (Ian Deakin) to be fit for Monday [match versus Cheltenham Town], so we’ve put another seven days in for Lewis.

“Between the clubs, etcetera, we’ve agreed until the end of the season, but by FA laws, every seven days we’ve got to put in a medical report on the two [injured] lads.

“We just want to make sure we’re covering ourselves and not leaving anything to chance. Obviously with the Bank Holiday, it’s potentially Lewis’ last game on Friday and we want to make sure he’s here for Monday too.

“The staff are working extremely hard behind-the-scenes to make sure the paperwork is done, but like I say, it’ll be ‘touch and go’ for ‘Maz’ and ‘Deaks’ for the next week and maybe even longer.”

Our team travel to the Store First Stadium tomorrow in search of their fifth straight league victory, and Cox has re-iterated his desire for us to finish the campaign strongly.

“We always tend to finish well here and we’ve not done anything different this season,” said our boss.

“We’ve got four massive games ahead of us and the boys are buoyed. At the minute, they’re training as well as I’ve ever seen them train this season and they’re really looking forward to it.”

He continued: “It’s going to be a tough game up at Accrington and all we can do is plan for that initially. 

“If we get some bumps and bruises or a little bit of tiredness or fatigue, then obviously we’re going to use other personnel. As I said a few weeks ago, the squad is so important now going into the final few games.”

A first league victory over Accrington in more than half-a-century tomorrow, coupled with favourable results elsewhere, could see us close the gap on the Play-Off zone to just three points.

Nevertheless, our boss remains coy about our Play-Off chances and insists our players are just focussed on earning three points in the North-West on Good Friday.

“The permutations are frightening,” said Cox.

“We’ve looked at [the situation] and we’ve done our little permutations and tried to sit the boys down and see what we can achieve, but the main thing is winning the next game and it’s a really tough one.

“But I think a lot of things will become a lot clearer by quarter-to-five on Monday. [In terms of] promotion and relegation, the table will look a little bit better for some people and worse for others.

“All we’re looking to do is build in and try and get a positive result at Accrington, and we’ll plan accordingly after that.”