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

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

The Stags were a cash-strapped non-league side then, and did not own their ground or training facility.

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

And yet, for all the years of development, getting ready to host Arsenal has been likened to preparing for a “shotgun wedding”, according to Carolyn, as “there is not much time between rounds to kind of embrace it”.

Minor improvements – be it a coat of paint or fixing taps – have been rushed through in the weeks since Mansfield’s upstaging of Premier League side Burnley in the fourth round.

Still, John says Arsenal will just have to do without some of the luxuries that they are used to for Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off (12:15 GMT).

“We were at Burnley the other week and their boardroom had heated seats. Now, we don’t quite have heated seats, but Mansfield is always sunny,” the club owner and chairman says with a laugh.

It was from those toasty seats at Turf Moor that the Radfords watched Mansfield fight back from a goal down to beat Burnley in February, with second-half goals from Rhys Oates and Louis Reed helping Nigel Clough’s Stags through.

It set Mansfield up for the tie with Arsenal, a side that John admits he “keeps an eye on”, but in the same breath he leaves little doubt that he is “Mansfield through and through”.

He does, however, relish the fact that the win against Burnley means Mansfield have beaten more Premier League sides in 2026 than Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur have managed.

“There was a lot of excitement and high fives in the household when the draw was made,” he says.