Huge double away testers looming for in-form Mansfield Town this week

Stags impressively stretched their points tally from the first six games to 11 after Saturday's hard-earned 2-1 home win on Saturday but boss Nigel Clough admitted: “It will be a different challenge to the home games this week.

“We have only played the two away games in the league so far with contrasting fortunes.

“We were very good at Barnsley while, although having a lot of the play at Lincoln, we made too many mistakes there.

“That will be the key to it everywhere – but especially away from home. We can't afford those mistakes.”

Northampton was the scene of a huge low for Stags when a 2-0 loss there in October 2021 made it 10 games without a win and Clough possibly on the verge of leaving the club, and then a massive high there seven months later when they won 1-0 to clinch a Wembley play-off final.

“We have certainly had contrasting fortunes at Sixfields,” said Clough.

“We put in one of our worst performances there in the 2-0 defeat but then went back in the second leg of the play-offs and got an incredibly important victory.

“John-Joe O'Toole and Keiran Wallace were the two holding midfielders that day and were absolutely magnificent – we snuffed out the majority of their threats. They threw everything at us and we showed great character.

“But Northampton bounced back to get automatic promotion and comfortably stayed in the league last year which is a great credit to them.

“They have established themselves very quickly.

“Judging by their result on Saturday at Huddersfield I think they will do the same again this season.

“I thought it was the result of the weekend – outstanding. To go 3-0 up at one of the promotion favourites, who have had an excellent start.”

Clough continued: “We were on a very poor run of games when we went there in the October. It was a very big turning point for us.

“We had a very quiet word with the players afterwards and said I think we were on the verge of possibly moving on at that point if that was the best we could get out of them.

“But three days later we put in a very good performance against Port Vale at home, drew 1-1, missed a penalty and the crowd gave us a standing ovation and everything has been progress and moving forward from there every season since.”

On this week's away challenges, he added: “We have to defend better. So far this season we have not kept a clean sheet and we are desperate for one now.

“Generally we have been okay but it's just isolated incidents and we have probably made more mistakes individually then we did in 36 games last season, which is frustrating. At this level teams are going to punish you.”

Clough said the strength of the bottom two underlines how good this division is.

“I don't know how, but inexplicably Cambridge are bottom of the league and Shrewsbury second bottom, yet we saw two very good teams coming here to play football,” he said.

“And I think both will consider themselves a bit unlucky in some ways not to get a point out of the games.

“They were two very important wins for us back to back and any time you can do that during a season it makes a big difference.

"Sitting here now, you don't know until the end of the month how important those points are going to be.

“We know it will be a long 40 games for us but we have shown we can compete.”