‘Brilliant’ Mansfield Town display at Newport was ‘blueprint’ for rest of the season ahead of Bradford City trip says boss Nigel Clough

Stags dominated for over 70 minutes and led 1-0 and the afternoon only disintigrated after John-Joe O'Toole was sent off.

“I think we are one of the most positive teams in the league if not the most positive,” said Clough.

“To go away from home to a promotion rival and play as we did on Saturday proves that.

“I think that's the blueprint for the rest of the season if we can.

“Surfaces won't always allow that - and opposition.

“The pitch at Newport was absolutely magnificent considering the weather we'd had for a couple of days.”

He continued: “The key has been that solid foundation we've had in recent weeks and combining that with a threat going forward.

“We didn't have that enough at Harrogate or Bristol Rovers but we certainly did on Saturday.

“We talk about progressing to the next stage.

“You start off with the solid foundations which gets you a couple of 0-0s. Now we want to take it on and create chances and score goals. That should have resulted in three points on Saturday.

“We try to set to play away from home like we do at home. And Saturday at Newport was the best we've achieved in terms of controlling a game.

“Sometimes at home we are 100 per cent mad and going for it, which is brilliant and causes teams a lot of problems.

“But we still want to have a certain amount of control in the game and I thought we had that on Saturday and restricted them to so few chances in the first 70 minutes, while creating numerous ourselves.

“For that period of time it was a complete performance apart from finishing the chances we created.”

After O'Toole's 72nd minute dismissal, tempers were running high and Stephen Quinn's anger over the penalty decision saw him substituted before he too was dismissed as the red mist came down.

“With the added time that was played I think it was nearly 30 minutes we played with 10 men,” said Clough.

“We couldn't afford to risk anybody else losing their heads which is why Stephen Quinn came off.

“We were pretty solid after that. They had a couple of skirmishes but I think we had the best situations still in the 97th minute.

“If Elliott Hewitt just happens to see Lucas Akins in the middle, we get a great opportunity to pinch it. If he'd squared it for him we might have got a deserved three points.”

In the end most focus was on the red card for O'Toole.

“We lost two points and we lost the two centre halves for two and three games respectively. So it wasn't a good day from that point of view,” said Clough.

“We should have been getting closer to that top three as the performance was as well as we've played, certainly away from home, for some time – creating the amount of chances we did.

“If we'd kept 11 men on the pitch and not done anything silly then I think we'd have won the game.

“I thought we were brilliant. We kept the top scorer in the league quiet and created numerous chances ourselves, particularly first half. We certainly should have had a penalty as well – absolutely blatant.

“It was a brilliant performance and a little bit of a waste when you only get the point from it.”

“We are looking forward to every game at the moment.”