Preston North End begin their Carabao Cup campaign on Tuesday night with a trip to League Two side Mansfield Town.
After previously not having played the Stags since 2005, this will be the second year in succession that PNE have come up against Mansfield, having faced them at the same stage of the same competition last season.
Heading into it after Saturday’s defeat to Hull City, Frankie McAvoy’s men will be looking for their first competitive win of the new campaign.
Match Information
Venue: One Call Stadium
Date: Tuesday 10th August, 7.45pm kick-off
Competition: Carabao Cup First Round
Kit: Home kit – available to purchase here!
Supporter Information
PNE fans can still get their tickets for this fixture, with tickets remaining from the 1,700 allocation. Find full details here.
Carabao Cup fixtures are unavailable to stream both domestically and internationally on iFollow, but supporters can purchase an audio match pass here for £2.50, with commentary coming from Guy Clarke and David Buchanan.
PNE Team News
After missing the Hull game at the weekend due to isolation, Sean Maguire and Scott Sinclair will be back in contention to feature on Tuesday night.
Declan Rudd will be absent, though, as he recovers from a concussion injury which forced him off in the early stages of Saturday’s game.
Other than that, the squad came through the Championship opener unscathed and Frankie will have the majority of his team available to choose from.
The Opposition
After a positive pre-season which included victories over Championship sides Hull City and Coventry City, Mansfield got three points from their opening game of the League Two season on Saturday.
It was a 96th-minute penalty which gave them the win over Joey Barton’s Bristol Rovers, with Danny Johnson slotting home and sending the returning crowd behind the goal into raptures.
Both the Stags and their opposition last weekend are tipped to be up towards the top end of the division, so the win gave them a good platform to build on.
Key Stats
In recent meetings, PNE have defended admirably when coming up against the side from Nottinghamshire, going the last five games without conceding a goal.
The Lilywhites have also scored 15 times in those matches, too, with 4-0 being the outcome of the last two encounters.
A famous meeting between the two came in 1995, when North End hosted the Stags at Deepdale and came out 6-0 winners, with the lethal strike force of Andy Saville and Steve Wilkinson both bagging a hat-trick.
Our Last Meeting
Mansfield came to PR1 just short of 12 months ago after being drawn against Alex Neil’s PNE in the first round of the 2020/21 Carabao Cup.
That fixture actually took place before the start of the league term, with both clubs agreeing to play the game as part of their pre-season preparations.
As previously mentioned, North End came out 4-0 winners and had four different scorers on the day, with Tom Barkhuizen, Sean Maguire, Patrick Bauer and Josh Harrop all finding the back of the net.
Man In The Middle
Not only are these sides meeting each other at the same stage of the same competition as last season, but the man in the middle on that day will again take charge.
That game last year was only Ross Joyce's second time overseeing a North End match, the first being the 6-0 victory over Barnet in the FA Cup in 2013, in which Paul Gallagher scored a hat-trick.
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