Assistant manager Lee Glover has revealed that a strong lineup will be named for Tuesday evening’s first round Carabao Cup clash against Morecambe, with the aim to kick-start a ‘good cup run’ in the competition.
The amber and blue exited last year’s competition at the second round, narrowly losing 2-1 away to Sky Bet Championship side West Brom.
Lee Glover says that the Stags will go with a strong side in Tuesday evening’s first round match, adding that current suspensions and injuries leave space for players to ‘step in’ and ‘do the business.’
“It [Matt Preston and Jacob Mellis suspensions] will give other people a chance. We have other people in the squad who can step in,” he began.
“If they do the business, they stay in the team. If someone comes in and does well, they stay in the team. The manager has made that quite clear.
“We’re disappointed when people get suspended or injured, but that opens a door for somebody else.
“We’re hoping that someone will come in and stay in there because they’re doing well.
“We’ll put out a strong side tomorrow [against Morecambe] because we want to get through [in the Carabao Cup].
“It would be nice to have a good cup run, because the supporters like it, so we’ll be respectful of any cup. We’ll put a side out that will hopefully win the game.
“We know them [Morecambe] and they know us. We imposed ourselves well [on Saturday] in the second-half, so we want to start like that.
“We’ve had a very good training session today and a good positive meeting. The feel around the place is positive and we want to take that into the game.”
The assistant boss also reflected on Mansfield’s two league games thus far, in which the Stags have conceded early goals.
He added that the Stags must continue to attack the opposition early on, yet not ‘leave themselves open’ at the back.
“If you watch, we’ve started both games well, which sounds daft because we’ve conceded early in both of them,” he added. “But we’ve had a couple of efforts at goal in both games [early on] and have been in the opposition penalty area.
“We’ve actually started well, but we’ve conceded early, which has given us a bit of a mountain to climb.
“We need to make sure that, although we want to start well and get at the opposition, we don’t want to leave ourselves open.
“We’re looking at everything and want to just keep our focus. We want to make sure we keep our shape a bit better when we don’t have the ball.
“I think that we’re a far better side when we pass the ball. We look like we have goals in the side when we do pass it through midfield.
“That’s been really positive. We had a meeting today and showed the lads clips of the things we’ve been seeing and what we want to see more of.”
Some good news from the Stags’ camp is that defender Hayden White (below) is in a position to start matches, Lee Glover has confirmed.
“He [White] has trained again today so we’re looking at it [giving him a start]. He’s been training for a while now so he’s come into consideration with Clarkey [James Clarke] and a couple of other players.
“I believe he [White] is [ready to start]. The medical department have put him forward to train for a few days now, so he should be ready.”
The assistant manager also spoke of striker Danny Rose’s (below) fine start to the campaign, in which he has scored in both league matches.
“Danny [Rose] is a very good player. His all-round game is very, very good and the header [against Morecambe] was a great goal.
“It was a great ball by Macca [Alex MacDonald] and it was a great header. Danny is looking very good.”
iFollow Stags subscribers can watch Lee Glover’s interview in full by logging into mansfieldtown.net/ifollow later today.
