Forest Green home preview for Tuesday night

[Sweden Stag]

After drawing 1-1 at Morecambe last Saturday. the Stags now take on Forest Green for the first time since the final day of the 2021-22 season. Then, a 2-2 draw at One Call ensured playoff position for the Stags and confimed Forest Green as champions on goal difference as Exeter lost at home to Port Vale. In that game, the Stags’ scorer at Morecambe, Baily Cargill, was an unused sub for Forest Green.

But following promotion, FGR lost their manager Rob Edwards to Watford and some key players. They were well out of depth in League One and won just one game after Xmas 2022, incidentally against Sheffield Wednesday at home last April, and immediate relegation was confirmed weeks before the end of last season.

And back in League Two, FGR have not found it easy, By the time of the original date, a run of six straight FGR defeats was halted by a 5-0 rout of Colchester, and none of the FGR players who played at One Call in May 2022, started l
that game. But FGR have struggled since then, and are now well inside the relegation zone seven points from safety and might well be the next side to drop from League One to the Conf National in preview history, following Stockport, Tranmere and Chesterfield (on the pitch) in preview history.

In recent preview history, games between the Stags and FGR have had a history of postponements and abandonments as the game at One Call scheduled one week after the rout of Notts County fell victim to the weather.

Our away game at Forest Green in 2021-22 went ahead at the third attempt after having been postponed / abandoned TWICE, a record during the same season in preview history. Just before Christmas 2021, illness caused the first postponement of this fixture. When the game was rearranged in mid-January 2022, the game had to be abandoned after just a few minutes due to fog at The New Lawn. Also a record in preview history as it also was not the first abandoned fixture between the sides at the same venue.

When the Stags played away at Forest Green in November 2020, they had just dumped Sunderland out of the FA Cup but were still searching their first League Two victory. But that came to a 2-1 scoreline after a superb first half.

The corresponding 2019-20 away fixture against FGR saw the Stags come back in dramatic fashion being two goals down to secure a lucky point. A brace from Andy Cook, the first coming just two minutes after that FGR had gone two up, was enough.

The away game against Forest Green during the 2018-19 belongs to the very few original games being abandoned in preview history as the original fixture was abandoned at half-time with the sides deadlocked at 0-0 due to a waterlogged pitch. One month later, the sides played out a 1-1 draw in a fixture worthy of two sides chasing promotion that season.

As Forest Green won the promotion playoff final against Tranmere Rovers in 2017, they no longer were the longest-serving National League side. They made their debut way back in 1998-99, then playing against i.e. Doncaster and Hereford, and were reprieved from relegation on two occasions, 2004-05 when Northwich took voluntary relegation and again in 2009-10, when Salisbury were thrown out for the first time at the end of that season.

There has been some player traffic between the two clubs in recent seasons. Since the end of the 2009-10 campaign, Forest Green had Craig Armstrong as player coach as well as Luke Jones, who scored TWICE against Forest Green in a man-of-the-match-performance when the Stags overturned a half-time 1-0 deficit into a convincing 4-1 victory at The New Lawn on January 30, 2010.

In the 2008-09 season, the Stags faced Forest Green for the first time ever. Below a rundown of those fixtures:

In the away fixture on November 22, 2008, the Stags were unlucky to lose by the only goal of the game, while the home one on March 14, 2009, was to be a record-breaker as the 3-0 home victory then was to the Stags' sixth consecutive home fixture without conceding a single goal. The stats, then included on the Stagsnet latest news page, showed these figures:

* 1-0 against Crawley on January 17, 2009
* 0-0 against Rushden & Diamonds on January 28, 2009
* 1-0 against York on February 7, 2009
* 0-0 against Kettering on February 17, 2009
* 1-0 against Lewes on March 7, 2009
* 3-0 against Forest Green on March 14, 2009

In total, it was to be 656 minutes, between the 37th minute in the home game against Burton on December 29, 2008, and the 63rd minute of the home game against Torquay on March 28, 2009, when Blair Sturrock (later to play for the Stags) equalized for the Gulls in the 1-1 draw at Field Mill. This was also in the spell of fifteen Field Mill games without defeat at Field Mill under David Holdsworth, ended by very controversial officiating against Stevenage a few weeks before the BSP 2009-10 home fixture against Forest Green.

More details on previous Stags v FGR fixtures are found in the Match Centre.

Here are some facts about Forest Green:

Two successive promotions in the late nineties enabled FGR to play in the Conference from 1998-99 onwards.

First in 1996-97, winning the Southern League Southern Division title, and in the following campaign, the championship of the Southern League Premier Division. And Forest Green's first-ever Conf game ended in a 2-0 defeat at home to Rushden & Diamonds on August 15, 1998. But Forest Green's first ever Conf three-pointer was gained on September 5, 1998 at, of all places, Doncaster! This was in Doncaster's darkest hours following their relegation from the Football League in 1997-98.

Most of Forest Green's National League campaigns were those of avoiding relegation. But in the 2007-08 season, they finished a then best-ever eight, and started the 2008-09 campaign very well. After six games, Forest Green were inside the playoffs position. But a number of injuries contributed to FGR plummeting down the table into the relegation zone after playing twelve BSP games without winning before the home game against the Stags. But Jim Harvey, formerly long.time boss at Morecambe, did steer his side into the third round of the FA Cup for the first time ever. Well there, Forest Green were rewarded with a plum home tie against the 2007-08 season's PL whipping-boys Derby County (yet all the Rams' last seven PL games were sell-outs!!!) and made a very good account for the BSP by only going down by the odd goal in seven. In that game, Derby were really on the brink of crashing out in front of a very good crowd, 4836. Beat that, some League Two sides! In the end, Forest Green stayed up due to a large number of away draws, ten in all.

During these years, a few Stags bosses managed against FGR. The 1-0 defeat in November 2008 was one of the last games for the late Billy McEwan in the Stags hot seat. David Holdsworth oversaw a few games against our Tuesday night opponents and the away defeat in November 2010 was enough for Holdsworth, who resigned after that game. And the games in the Stags’ two final seasons outside the EFL were overseen by Paul Cox. In total, eight different Stags bosses have managed games against FGR in preview history.

In EFL history, Forest Green have now faced five different Stags managers . The first one, Steve Evans, oversaw the first-ever EFL defeat on Forest Green in August 2017 at One Call. The return fixture saw the first Stags defeat during the reign of David Flitcroft, while John Dempster bossed in the 2-2 draw at the New Lane during the 2019-20 season. The dramatic game at One Call in January 2020 saw Graham Coughlan in the Stags hot seat, succeeded by Nigel Clough, who before the 2020-21 season last managed League fixtures against FGR during the 2008-09 campaign while in his first spell as Burton boss. Then he managed both Burton fixtures against FGR before departing to Derby County.

Since the departure of Rob Edwards, now at Luton, Forest Green have called upon four bosses. None has been successful to print the least. Ian Burchnall and Duncan Ferguson oversaw their drop into League Two without a whimper. David Horseman left the New Lawn just before last Xmas, and has been succeeded by Troy Deeney with PL experience at Watford as a player. Deeney has yet to see a Forest Green victory as they currently are winless in eleven and haven’t won on the road since early September 2023.

Quite a few players have appeared for the Stroud side as well as for the Stags. Best known are Ryan Williams and Jefferson Louis. Both players also starred for Weymouth and came from the Terras to the Stags, Williams was in his second Stags spell before leaving for Gainsborough, while Jefferson Louis while at Wrexham hit his best-ever scoring run for any club he has played for, he did play for more than a dozen clubs having appeared in the BSP in previewing history. Louis and Williams played for Forest Green in the 2004-05, but not together. Another one, found while doing the preview of the 2017-18 home fixture, but not found in November 2008, was the late Matt Gadsby, whose last BSP station was Forest Green, also in 2004-05. Gadsby played 66 games in two seasons for the Stroud side, and together with Louis and Williams. Luke Graham, who as a Luton player who caused the penalty which on the rebound sent the Stags to Wembley in 2011, had two spells at Forest Green. And the first-ever player to play for both sides in the FL was Lee Collins, who played the full 90 minutes of Forest Green’s first-ever FL game on an opening day which saw a staggering amount of 50 goals scored, including Yeovil’s highest-ever FL defeat, 8-2 at Luton, while the National League winners of 2016-17, Lincoln, managed a 2-2 draw at Wycombe. The second player to play FL games for both the Stags and FGR was Chris Clements, eleven FGR games including three as sub, on loan from Barrow. A third one was Alex Iacovitti, who started in ten FGR games during the 2017-18 campaign. Iacovitti was in the Oldham side which was routed by the Stags at One Call in October 2019. During the 2019-20 campaign, Conrad Logan played for both sides, and played five games for FGR after that season’s fixture at One Call.

All the players who have been traced playing for the Stags and FGR are listed below. Here they are:

James Alabi, Tomi Ameobi, Craig Armstrong, Michael Brough, Baily Cargill, Jon Challinor, Chris Clements, Lee Collins, Paul Digby, Ross Dyer, Matt Gadsby, Luke Graham, Alex Iacovitti, Guy Ipoua, James Jennings, Luke Jones, Marcus Kelly, Conrad Logan, Jefferson Louis, Paul McLoughlin, Gary Mills, Aaron O’Connor, Corey O’Keefe, George Pilkington, Mark Preece, Farrend Rawson, Adam Smith (goal-keeper), Richard Smith, Matt Somner, Thomas Stanton, Paul Stonehouse, Alex Sykes, Sam Wedgbury, Ryan Williams.

Stats file:

Home: P 10, W 7, D 2, L 1, GF 17, GA 7
Away: P 10, W 3, D 3, L 4, GF 13, GA 13

2008-09 3-0 2009-03-14 0-1 2008-11-22 BSP
2009-10 1-0 2009-10-03 4-1 2010-01-30 BSP
2010-11 3-1 2010-08-14 1-2 2010-11-13 BSP
2011-12 1-0 2012-01-07 1-1 2011-10-01 BSP
2012-13 1-0 2012-10-13 2-1 2013-03-15 BSP
2017-18 2-0 2017-08-12 0-2 2018-03-24 League Two
2018-19 1-0 2019-02-23 1-1 2019-01-29 League Two
2019-20 3-4 2020-01-11 2-2 2019-10-19 League Two
2020-21 0-0 2021-03-23 2-1 2020-11-14 League Two
2021-22 2-2 2022-05-07 0-1 2022-04-05 League Two

FA Cup

2009-10 1-1 2009-11-07 1st round at The New Lawn
2009-10 1-2 2009-11-17 1st round replay at Field Mill

Come on Mansfield!