Mansfield Town manager Nigel Clough plots January transfer window business

But he is largely happy with what he currently has, despite five defeats in a row ahead of this Saturday's tough challenge at Charlton Athletic.

“There will always be a little bit of business going on,” said Clough.

“It will only be one or two maximum as we are very pleased with the squad generally.

“I think we are okay for defenders now so it would probably be a midfielder and a striker, depending on Lee Gregory and how Rhys Oates does as well.

“We should hopefully know about Lee by the end of December/early January.

“He has had an injection to try to settle his knee injury down and we will know if that's working when he tries to play again by the end of this month.

“You could operate but have no guarantee of success, so the first stage is to put the injection in and see if that does the trick.

“He has nicked a cartilage, but at 35 he will be carrying a few battle scars from over the years.

“He has had no problems in the last year or two so is just unlucky with this and we hope we can get him through to the end of the season.”

Clough believes fringe players like Calum Macdonald, Tom Nichols and George Williams could move on for regular football in the window too.

“We have two or three lads outside the squad at the moment who may well want to go and get regular football,” he said.

“But with such a hectic Christmas period we can't do anything until 4th January and see where we are then.

“Calum's future here will just depend on numbers. The only reason he is out is purely numbers.

“If we had had the space without doubt he would be in the squad, but we are quite strong down the left hand side so unfortunately he is the odd one out.

“But that could change depending on who goes in January. He could well come back into it.

“I think we will see players going out.

“Tom Nichols needs to go out and play. He is too good to be sitting around kicking his heels.

“George Williams never lets us down but we are strong defensively and he might want to go and play regular football.

“We will be having those sorts of conversations over the next few weeks.

“Being such a busy Christmas period you can't do anything until you know if you have come through it relatively unscathed.”

Stags head for the Valley on Saturday looking to halt the current run of defeats and Clough said: “It's another ex-Premier League club with a huge stadium – it's a great place for us to go and play.

“They have been a bit up and down like ourselves this season so I think it will be an interesting game.

“We have played well on the road in just about all our away games this season so we need to maintain those standards and go and enjoy it.

“There is no need to be tensing up and getting nervous.

“We always knew it was going to be a testing season in many ways.

“But we are still halfway up the league and in the Third Round of the FA Cup.

“The lads are showing great character in maintaining those levels of performance, despite the defeats. We just need a break here and there. We know we're not far away and just need a result or two to back that up.”

Saturday's 2-1 home defeat by Huddersfield Town was another game that Stags deserved at least a point from.

“It was frustrating as there was very little wrong with the performance again,” said Clough.

“We are being punished disproportionately at the moment for the amount of attacks teams are having against us.

“That bit of quality showed up for Huddersfield as only six months ago we were two leagues apart and they have a Championship squad.

“We are just coming out the wrong side of results at the moment.

“But Michael Duff (Huddersfield boss) said to me afterwards that they had lost seven out of eight earlier in the season and they are not doing a lot differently.

“We are incredibly close right now. When we won five in a row earlier this season we were not playing anywhere near as well as we are now.”

Stags will send a squad to play an Everton side at their training ground for a friendly today.

“Most of the lads who need games will play, but it's mainly for Rhys Oates, who will play 45-60 minutes,” said Clough.

“It is our last chance to get them ready for the busy Christmas period.”