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With just 10 days to go to the start of the new season, it’s time for football fans everywhere to savour the sweet taste of optimism.

It’s a time of year when anything can happen for your team.

And, after recent near misses, Stags fans can certainly enjoy that optimism with every belief that this could finally be the season to reach League One.

As ever, it will take a bit of luck as well as quality – and Mansfield deserve some luck after last year’s crippling injury list took such a toll.

Football is back - the teams enter the field of play prior to the start of the pre-season match against Rotherham on Saturday. Photo by Chris & Jeanette Holloway/The Bigger Picture.media

But there was plenty on show in Saturday’s first half in the friendly against Rotherham United to suggest the optimism is justified.

Boss Nigel Clough has recruited sparingly but well, and some of the football played against Championship opposition was excellent.

All in all that first half provided a cracking game, and it was only a facial injury to Baily Cargill that temporarily disrupted the defence, which conceded two quickfire goals to the excellent Georgie Kelly, and then came the continual substitutions that saw the friendly peter out, as they usually do.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the July friendly was the rain, cold and mist that made it feel more like February.

Will the side that faced Rotherham be the starting XI at Crewe? We will know better after Saturday’s trip to Oldham Athletic, but it certainly won’t be far off with George Maris probably the main threat to those who started in the midfield berths.

Clough had four friendlies left at the start of this week in which to get final minutes into legs and allow players to change his mind as to his best XI.

We should also learn this week if James Perch is to stay at the club.

It would seem he has been offered a new deal with a start on the coaching ladder involved but knows he is down the pecking order as far as a place in the first team is concerned.

Even at 37 he still has the quality and vast experience to play – and he has offers from elsewhere to do that regularly which he won’t get at Stags unless there are injuries.

It’s a big decision you are a long time retired once you make that call. But Stags are offering him an opening to the future too.

LOMAS ON STAGS: Optimism justified for Mansfield Town fans as new season looms