Khan misses Grimsby visit as Stags start run of home games

Home sweet home - Stags now have four games at the One Call Stadium in a row. Photo by Willy Lane.

Khan missed out on the weekend 2-2 draw at Cheltenham Town with an Achille’s tendon injury and has not recovered enough yet for a return.

So the Stags squad is unchanged for this rearranged fixture, following its postponement due to Mansfield’s international call-ups last month.

Tonight marks the first of four successive home games for the stags after a tiring four of the last five on the road.

But they remain unbeaten in 10 games in all competitions and have only been beaten once in League Two all season.

On contrast, Grimsby have lost their last two without scoring, have only won once in four and only scored once in those games, so boss Michael Jolley admits they will need to be at their best tonight.

“We’re going to try and win the game, certainly,” he said.

“But if we’re going to get anything from Mansfield, we’ve got to be good in all aspects of our game.

“The pleasing thing for me is, despite the fact we’ve lost our last two games, we’ve not been that far away from taking a result in either game.

“We’re not over-thinking the fact that we have lost those games, but clearly we don’t want to go on another lengthy run where we don’t pick up points, so we know we’ve got to get points as soon as we can.

“We’ve not scored enough goals, so the big picture is if we’re going to be more successful this season, we need to score more goals – we need to be more productive in the top third.

“I’d be more concerned if we weren’t creating decent chances.”