Mansfield Town set to top up comeback players’ fitness against Newcastle United U21s

Defeats in their first two group games mean Mansfield were out and Clough said: “We are disappointed it is a dead rubber.

“We thought we deserved something from Rotherham in the first game, which would have given us a chance of getting through.

“Against Bradford we then had to put out quite a weak team out and Bradford played very well on the night.

“But we did try our best to get through as another game would not have done us any harm with trying to get the squad fit.

“We will use tomorrow again to build up players' fitness who need it. And we may fix up a friendly next week so make sure no one is playing catch up on fitness when we come out of the likely international break.

“Alfie Kilgour, Aden Flint, Frazer Blake-Tracy, and George Maris will start tomorrow.

“Hiram Boateng has not played the last couple so he will be out there, Ben Waine too.

“It gives us the chance to give Calum Macdonald a game as well.

“Also, we have Lucas Akins coming back from injury and we have Tom Nichols and Ben Quinn, who have both been a bit unlucky to be out of the matchday squad, but now everyone is fit that's the way it is.

“And we will get a few young lads on the bench, hopefully to get them some experience later in the game. But the priority has to be getting the first teamers up to speed.”

Clough added: “We certainly don't want to pick up any injuries going into these two big games before what will probably be an international break.

“Curzon Ashton away in the FA Cup and Wrexham away in the league are two big games, even at this stage of the season.

“We want to get through to the next round of the cup and get something at Wrexham.

“One thing that has surprised me is that in the last four games we have used 21 players, which emphasises how much the squad is contributing to this run of results and trying to keep people fresh.

“I don't like the word rotation as it suggests something we don't do.

“The team we put out is a team to get a result from the game.”