Nigel Clough says his side are ‘taking nothing for granted’ ahead of Tuesday's potential promotion-winning clash with Accrington Stanley.
Stags came away from Stadium MK last Saturday with a 4-1 victory, leaving themselves just one win away from guaranteeing promotion to Sky Bet League One.
The amber and blue now prepare to face Accrington on Tuesday evening at One Call Stadium (7:45pm kick-off), before hosting Gillingham on Saturday and travelling to Barrow on the final day of the season.
In a news conference at RH Academy this afternoon, the gaffer firstly spoke about the emotion of Saturday’s victory in Milton Keynes: “Elation, jubilation and relief that we’ve put ourselves in the position that we have,” he said.
“It has to be at the top of the charts for this season because of the importance of the result.
“To come back against such a good team, stadium [and] atmosphere with how crucial the game was is right up there.”
When asked about the possibility of winning promotion on Tuesday evening, the gaffer said: “We’re taking nothing for granted and want to do the business ourselves.
“We don’t want it going into Saturday where you’re keeping one eye on another result, we want to do it off our own back tomorrow.”
He also spoke about managing the emotions of his players ahead of the game and said: “It’s going to be very difficult in the circumstances but if we can do that [then] we’ll do it and approach it like we have the other 42 games this season, in as positive a manner as we can.
“We have to try and keep that on an even keel tomorrow night because there will be a lot of emotion, expectation and optimism in the crowd.
“We need to use that to our advantage and first of all try and get a goal to settle things down, that’ll be our intention from the off.
“The feeling is one we want to have, we nearly had it on Saturday in terms of we knew we were just one point short [so] let’s get the job done tomorrow.
“It’s a bit of a cliché but once they do go out there you can’t do an awful lot to control it. We've prepared for eight and a half months for this moment so we’ve got to see it through.”
The gaffer also confirmed there would be a ‘few doubts after Saturday’, adding ‘I don’t think any of the defenders that were missing Saturday will make it for tomorrow night.’
However, Nigel said: ‘It’ll hopefully be pretty much the same 18’ available at his disposal against Accrington who featured at MK Dons last weekend.”
