Match Preview: Newport County v Mansfield Town (Saturday, 3pm)

Mansfield Town travel to Newport County on Saturday in League Two.

The visitors come into the game on the back of a win in their last match, having beaten Salford City 5-1 at home, with goals from Hiram Boateng, Baily Cargill, Lukas Akins, Davis Keillor-Dunn and Will Swan.

The Exiles also won their last match, 4-1 against Harrogate Town, with their goals scored by Offrande Zanzala, Will Evans and Sebastian Palmer-Houlden.

Mansfield are top of the table after 33 games, of which they have won 17 and drawn 12, earning 63 points.

Newport are nine places behind Town in 10th, with 14 wins and seven draws putting them on 49 points.

With 67 goals in 33 games so far this season, the Stags are the league’s second-highest scorers with 2.0 goals per game. And they are conceding fewer than average, letting in 29 goals at a rate of 0.9 per game.

County, meanwhile, are average scorers, with 1.5 goals per game. They have conceded 1.6 goals per game.

In Christy Pym, the away team can rely on one of the league’s safest pair of hands. He has kept 12 clean sheets in his 33 appearances this season, and no ‘keeper has prevented the opposition scoring more often in League Two.

In the Exiles’ net, Nick Townsend has eight clean sheets in 32 games. He has conceded a goal every 65 minutes, 70% more often than the 110 minutes between goals for Pym.

In the last 10 years, Newport and Mansfield have played each other on 19 occasions. Newport won three of them, Mansfield nine, and they drew seven times.

On average, the Exiles scored 0.8 goals and the Stags 1.6 in those matches.

Their last meeting was on November 18, when Mansfield won 2-0 at home.

The hosts are in reasonable form in League Two, with four wins and two losses from their last six games.

And also with four wins and two losses over that period, Mansfield’s form is identical – they have both taken 12 points from 18.

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Newport County v Mansfield Town
League Two | Rodney Parade
Saturday, 2 March 2024 @ 3.00pm

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