Newport v Mansfield
Thursday, 19:45
Live on Sky Sports
A thrilling ride
Chasing a play-off place, says Mike Flynn the Newport manager, has been more thrilling than the Great Escape of two seasons ago when the Exiles managed to stay in League Two from an impossible looking position at the bottom with 12 games left.
Yes, captain obvious! But can the South Wales club now pull off the minor miracle of defeating clubs who have toyed most of the season with automatic promotion, to reach League One? They are the outsiders at [5.5] in the promotion market, despite being the form team who have crept in to the top seven with a week of the season to go. Mansfield are [2.95].
Mansfield fans who had become restless when the new manager didn’t finish the job of promotion last season – not even finishing in the top seven – had to survive unsavoury scenes at Milton Keynes on the final day. The Stags lost 1-0 and, during a pitch invasion afterwards, the manager David Flitcroft had to urge opposing fans to leave his supporters alone. What the hosts’ problems were, an FA investigation will discover.
Mansfield looked third or fourth best for much of the season, flirting heavily with a top three finish. However, 11 away draws – far more than any opponents – held them back. There are no easy games in the play-offs, but they won’t relish having to visit FA Cup giant killers who defeated Leicester City and Middlebrough on their own turf. Flynn says Newport have a bottom-three budget. Maybe. But I struggle to believe that, because they have had excellent cup runs these past two years to fund their exploits.
However, the Stags will perhaps be happy to face them away first, and take them back to Field Mill, where they have a home record as good as Newport’s, where they have a +23 goal difference.
Form momentum is with Newport
Let’s talk about form for a minute, even if Stags boss Flitcroft just wants to ignore it as an irrelevance. He might want to look away for a minute.
Newport have simply outboxed everybody in the play-off places recently – making a mockery of their 6.0 quote for promotion. Take that as a back to lay.
To explain, recent form for those in places two to six has been seriously muddled in the past two months, with the teams often facing each other. But, strikingly, Newport’s haul over the final 10 games of the season was 22 points with a 14-5 goal difference. Forest Green had 20 points, Tranmere 15 and Mansfield 12, with a 15-11 goal difference. Opta emphasise that Newport’s 10 game run is unbeaten and that it is the current longest such run in the division.
Furthermore, Newport’s last four at home (10 points) compares very favourably to the Stags’ four points from their last four away away games.
So Newport’s price of [2.66] looks quite juicy compared to Mansfield’s [3.1], which seems appropriate or even too short. The draw, priced [3.4] is on the long side – the visitors have 11 away and 16 in the season.
Newport’s best opportunity in this tie is surely at home, so the home win looks the value.
It also doesn’t help Mansfield that, whereas, also, that in the first 20 years of the play-offs, the fourth placed team in League Two almost always won promotion, Opta tells us that the team in fourth has won just once in the past 10 seasons and that finishing seventh has produced the winner in five of the last nine years.
Defender Matt Preston‘s absence from both legs, to recover from concussion for a second time this season, doesn’t help Mansfield’s cause either – especially as he has been at the centre of giving them the division’s meanest defence.
Goals could be at a premium
The other thing about Newport’s recent (remarkable) run is their lack of goals conceded. In their last 10 games keeper Joe Day and his defence have conceded just three times. And the attackers have scored 14. That’s 1.7 goals per match, making under 2.5 goals highly likely at [1.8].
The spanner in that? Mansfield’s goal ratio is a lot higher, 15-11 over 10 games (2.6 per game) and 7-6 over the last four away (3.25 per match). I think the hosts’ mean defence is the trump card.
Amond pips Newport pal as first goalscorer2>
Opta point out that Tyler Walker, who leads the first goalscorer market at [4.5], has scored five and produced an assist in six of the last seven games for Mansfield and that Danny Rose (priced at [7.1]) has scored in all four of his league starts against Mansfield.
Indeed Walker’s 22 strikes and CJ Hamilton‘s 11 (he’s priced at [6.0]) give Flynn a headache to solve, but it is interesting that Walker has scored just three against top seven sides – one on the opening day against Newport, then others against Bury and Tranmere. It’s about time Jorge Grant chipped in with a few more from midfield.
Padraig Amond and Jamille Matt, Newport’s danger men, have a much more even split with 14 goals apiece – and they are both priced [5.5] to score the first goal. A twin pronged equal attack problem that Flitcroft therefore has to solve.
It was Matt who scored that 87th minute equaliser at Morecambe to propel the hosts from 10th to seventh in the dying minutes of the season. He now has three goals in six games.
Which of the two is the bigger game player? The match winner? Both have scored in this season’s FA Cup run to the Fifth Round, where Manchester City eventually knocked them out. But with Amond’s five goals to Matt’s three in that regard, it’s the Irishman who gets the nod as the game’s first scorer.
In fact, combining the possibility of the game finishing under 2.5 goals and of both those strikers scoring, I’m going to go for 2-0 in the correct score market at [12.0].
Source: BetFair Tips
