Mansfield Town under-18s host Lincoln City this Saturday at One Call Stadium in a Youth Alliance Merit League fixture (11am kick-off).
Stags were crowned as the winners of the Youth Alliance North East Division title with a 1-0 win over Burton Albion last Friday. Midfielder Oliver Taylor provided the only goal of the game.
On the match, professional development phase lead coach Steve Chettle said: “It was a really tough game against a really good team.
“We knew they were really good because they were the team trying to catch us in the league.
“We put in a really good performance at One Call Stadium again and Olly Taylor scored a great goal to finish the game 1-0.
“We have two games left; we’ve replicated the first team. They got promoted and we became champions.”
Speaking about the season in general, he added: "We’ve worked really hard this year, we’ve implemented some things, myself and Charlie [Ian McParland], and all the staff work really hard.
“The lads have bought into what we’re trying to do, and they’ve given us everything every week.
“Some boys have played almost 50 games this year.
“It’s a massive workload for some first-year scholars and we’ve had some huge help from McKeal [Abdullah] who scored 30-odd goals and Ronnie Kokkinos and Lewis Warnaby were standout players also during the season.”
Asked about the reasons behind his side’s superb season, the coach said: “[It’s down to] Consistency and clean sheets.
“I think we’ve conceded 24 goals in 23 games so it [our clean sheet record] is really good and our goal difference has been really high compared to the other teams because of the clean sheets that we’ve kept.”
The former Nottingham Forest defender went on to discuss Stags’ preparations for Saturday’s match.
“The last month has been really full on with fixtures, so we gave the boys a three-day break,” he said.
“We’re back in again to work tomorrow, preparing for Lincoln but we want to finish off the season well and get to 50 points.
“We finish against Hartlepool on Tuesday to finish off our year properly.”
Supporters can attend the match for FREE via the entrance at Sandy’s Bar & Kitchen’s in the Ian Greaves Stand at One Call Stadium.
The postal address for the game is: Quarry Lane, Mansfield, NG18 5DA
