Mansfield Town vs Arsenal: Why an FA Cup tie is a ‘shotgun wedding’ for League One Stags

Huge sums of money have been pumped into Mansfield Town since John Radford bought the club in 2010.

The Stags were a cash-strapped non-league team at the time, and did not own their own stadium or training facility.

They now own both, and have since moved into two divisions and doubled their average home attendance to about 8,000 in that time.

However, throughout the years of development, preparing to host Arsenal has been likened to preparing for a “big wedding”, according to Caroline, as “there is not a lot of time between rounds to embrace it”.

Minor improvements have been made – be it a coat of paint or installing taps – in the weeks since Mansfield edged past Premier League side Burnley in the fourth round.

However, John says Arsenal will have to do without some of the luxuries they have become accustomed to for Saturday’s lunch match (12:15 GMT).

“We were in Burnley a few days ago and the boardroom had heated seats,” the club owner and chairman laughs. “Now, we don’t quite have heated seats, but Mansfield is always sunny.”

From those comfortable seats at Turf Moor, he watched Radford’s Mansfield fight back from a goal down to beat Burnley in February, as Rhys Oates and Lewis Reid helped Nigel Clough’s side through.

It set Mansfield up for a draw with Arsenal, a team that John admits he “keeps an eye on”, but at the same time leaves no doubt that he is “Mansfield in every sense of the word”.

However, he is relishing the fact that victory over Burnley means Mansfield have beaten more Premier League teams in 2026 than Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur have managed to beat.

“There was a lot of excitement and congratulations in the family when the lottery was made,” he says.