David Artell says he is not surprised that Mansfield Town have only been beaten once this season.

David Flitcroft’s side arrive in South Cheshire this evening having only lost once to promotion rivals Exeter City but they have drawn a further 9 of their fixtures. They have two games in hand on most of their rivals after having games postponed due to their International call-ups. One of those is our re-arranged fixture at Gresty Road.

Artell told the club’s official website: “Hopefully we can carry on our little bit of momentum and remain unbeaten. We want to carry that one with another positive result against Mansfield.

“If we can defend as well as we have been doing and be effective in the final third then we have a good a chance of anyone of inflicting a rare defeat on Mansfield.

“They have only lost one game but the majority of their games. That proves they are hard to beat and I would think that David Flitcroft will be thinking they should have more points than they have because some of those draws should have been wins.

“They have scored 18 and only conceded 10, so they are a bit similar to us, but they have ground out more draws, especially away from home and we didn’t do that in the early part of the season. We lost a few games 1-0.

“I don’t expect to see much difference now that David is at Mansfield. He will have his philosophy and we have come up against his Swindon and Mansfield teams before. They have some top players for this level and it will be a good marker for us.

The boss added: “We have to make sure that their good players do not have a good night and that our good players can exploit their weaknesses.”