Brady heads to Hartlepool for scouting mission on Mansfield Town

Cobblers boss Jon Brady will be making the long trip to Hartlepool United later today (Tuesday) to scout Mansfield Town ahead of this weekend's huge promotion showdown at Field Mill.

Mansfield are currently four points adrift of an automatic promotion position but have three games in hand on most of their rivals, one of which is against Hartlepool this evening.

Victory would bring them to within a point of the Cobblers going into Saturday's clash, and Brady is hoping to get a little insight into the workings of Nigel Clough's side by watching them in person.

"I do feel it's a benefit to be able to watch teams live because on a screen you don't see the overall picture," said Brady.

"When you're there, you can watch certain individuals for a bit of time if you really need to or when the ball's up front, you can watch the back-line. You get an overall view of the game and that's so much better.

"You also have much more feel for the game when you are there watching live whereas you don't get much context on video.

"You get all those little intricacies that give you a much better insight so I feel it's really important that we do that."

Cobblers do not have the best of recent records at Mansfield, failing to win on any of their last seven visits, including four defeats, but Brady is not worried by what's happened in the past.

He added: "I don't really pay too much attention to the history of previous games because we are a totally different team with totally different players and coaches.

"People can reflect on that but we need to play how we want to play and they are a very different team over the last couple of years.

"We will look at them and take the game on and try and beat them the best way we can."