Crucial battle at Bradford City looms for Mansfield Town in important weekend in promotion battle

Stags lost 3-2 at home to the Bantams last season before winning 2-0 away and this season lost 2-1 at home to a side now a single point behind them with a game in hand.

“I think it is a significant weekend when you look at some of the fixtures and it is very important for us, first of all, not to lose, said Clough.

“If we can get the three points it will put us in a good position.

“We have had a couple of cracking games there over the last two seasons.

“Bradford have managed to turn us over at our place but we have won at their place – it would be nice to continue that trend.

“We know what the atmosphere was like with 8,000 here on Saturday and there could be 18,000 there on Saturday at Bradford.

“They are up there challenging and one of our rivals so it would be nice to get a result.”

He added: “As he has done throughout his career, Mark Hughes has them very competitive, solid and difficult to break down as we saw when we played them earlier on in the season

" Even when they went down to 10 men we still struggled to create.

“In the time Mark Hughes has been there they have gone from the bottom half of the league to challenging for the play-offs – you can see the improvement.

"I hope last Saturday's win over Doncaster gives us a lot more belief going to Bradford on Saturday and beyond for the rest of the season.

“You have to win your home games or a fair proportion of them to have any chance at all of getting in the top seven. So it as important we won on Saturday.

“These games against Doncaster and Bradford, people are now really looking forward to them.”

Stephen McLaughlin is likely to be sidelined with an ankle injury with fitness checks later in the week on Hiram Boateng and Christy Pym.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But new signing David Keillor-Dunn will be in line for a debut.