These two sides are going for promotion this season with Doncaster Rovers able to seal the League Two title on Saturday if they beat play-off chasers Mansfield Town in this match.
Doncaster have been fantastic throughout the whole of the season and will thoroughly deserve to go up as champions when that inevitably happens. They are on a fantastic run right now with four wins in their last five and could still claim promotion on Saturday, even if they fail to beat Mansfield.
Attack, attack, attack has very much been the philosophy for Darren Ferguson’s side this campaign and they have the best goal-scoring record in the league by far with an incredible 80 goals in just 40 matches. Furthermore, they have found the back of the net 14 times in their last five outings. This brilliant goal return has meant that Doncaster have not really had to defend in order to pick up results – shown by the fact they only have the seventh-best defensive record in the league. They simply blitz and outscore the opposition.
Donny lost their last match at home in a 1-0 defeat to Plymouth in what was their first league defeat at the Keepmoat Stadium this season – a shame they could not last the whole season. The goals certainly flow for Doncaster on home soil and they have scored in 95% of their league games at the Keepmoat. That aforementioned defeat against Plymouth was the first time Ferguson’s men had failed to score in a home league game all season.
Mansfield manager Steve Evans says they go into this game with no pressure and has backed his side to spoil the promotion party on Saturday. However, his side are in a bit of a bad way at the moment with three defeats in their last five, although they are still just four points off the top seven.
In contrast to Doncaster, the Stags have put emphasis on the defensive side of their game, as shown by the fact they have the fifth-best defensive record in the league having conceded just 45 goals in 40 games whilst they have also kept 14 clean sheets. Offensively though, there are a few problems and their Goals For statistic of 49 is the worst in the top nine.
Evans’s men won their last away match at Morecambe, however, that is pretty much a given for most teams at the moment and, prior to that, they had failed to take maximum points from their last four matches. Furthermore, they failed to score in any of those games, despite playing sides lower than them in the table.
As Evans says, the pressure is on Doncaster to secure promotion here so there is potential for a slip-up. However, Donny have been fantastic all season and I expect them to get the job done on Saturday. Backing the home side to come out on top is hard to resist.
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