This is our year! Mansfield town season preview

'This is our year' as a supporter I say these 4 words at the start of every season and so does fellow supporters, but when supporters have said it in the past , have they really believed it deep down. I don’t think so. But this year does seem different, for the first time since I started supporting Mansfield town football club, I actually feel confident that we could win the league or win the play offs. It feels very different coming up to this season, I expect us to finish in the play offs, which is all knew as a stags fan for me, in the past I’ve hoped and believed it , now I expect it.

For those that don’t know I was born in Barnsley and have always lived in Yorkshire and supported the stags, so some success is a long time coming if you ask me, after putting up with Barnsley fans for years and years, its about time I have some success. Obviously its not just me that deserves some success, its all of the fans for supporting the stags through thick and thin and I think this season is the biggest chance we've had in 10 years.

As it comes closer to the ' big kick off ' I am getting more and more nervous and excited, questions just keep flying around my head; what system will he play? Who is he going to play? What if we crack under pressure with all the expectation? As a stags fan you get used to asking yourself these questions after many years of wrong systems, awful signings and games where we’ve bottled it!

The system and players we should play- after looking at PC's signings, I’ve always been thinking who will play where and who will play more importantly so here is the team and system I would play. For me it would be a formation of 4-2-3-1 with a back four of Beevers Pilkington Dempster and Owens, which then will have a midfield 2 of.... well with these 2 positions I feel it could be rotated between 4 players- Tolley, Hand, Howell and Roberts and try and find which partnership is the best. Then moving onto the attacking midfield 3 which would include two wingers, Meikle and Speight with Clements or Stevenson playing the role behind the striker, now its almost obvious who will be upfront, the man ... Matt Green, I don’t really need to say much about this decision after the impression he made on the supporters last season. With this formation I feel it plays to our strengths as it gives us stability at the back, as we can defend in numbers, by turning the formation almost into 4-5-1 when defending and it would be very easy to hit teams on the counter attack as we have 4 players acting as forward players. I’m not saying this must be the formation we play, I’m just saying I would like to see how it suits us , cos on paper I believe this is perfect.

Its almost time people, its almost time for the drama to unfold and for those 11 players to put us through more than we can take. We have the players this year, we have the quality, we have fans. This is where it all begins our Journey up the football league ladder. This is our year and I believe it is. Mansfield town for promotion. Bet on it!