Former Mansfield Town skipper James Perch says Nigel Clough is the best manager he ever worked for

Clough was unable to mark his fifth anniversary at the club with a win this week as they crashed 2-1 at Northampton Town on Saturday ahead of the international break.

But retired former million pound Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United star Perch had glowing words for Clough, who has taken Stags into League One with ambitions growing to go one step further, which Perch believes his old boss could achieve.

“He is just a great person,” said Perch. “He's the best manager I have had, though Billy Davies was good for me as well at Forest too.

“I was 33/34 when he came in at Mansfield and the biggest compliment I can pay him is that I wish he had managed me 10 years earlier.

“I learned things under him at that age that I had not learned in the previous 20 years which would have made me a better player and I might have played longer in the Premier League then I did.

“It's mad to think I got to my mid-30s before I understood football like I should have done.

“I loved every single minute of my time under him at Mansfield apart from the injuries I had. Even then he was great with me.

“It was especially great being a Mansfield boy myself and it was great to see them go up the year after I left and to see them doing well now.

“It was a great way to finish my career in league football.”

Stags sit eighth with the play-off places beckoning and Perch said: “I don't think taking them up beyond this league is out of sight. I think play-offs and promotion are possible.

“His recruitment is brilliant and he doesn't get many players wrong.

“As a manager he is honest and he can be ruthless at times, which I think is great. I love that style of management.

“He has very good man to man management and his knowledge of football is second to none. He just gets it. He's been around it a long time.”

Clough arrived at Mansfield in November 2020 with the Stags in 22nd in League Two.

“I had not worked with him before but I'd heard good things,” said Perch.

“It was a bad time for the lads at Mansfield at that time.

“Graham (Coughlan) didn't get us playing and we didn't get the results we needed. So he eventually lost his job.

“Nigel Clough came in and made a great impact. He has that aura around him.

“Obviously I had the Forest connection in common with him.

“I had always known him and spoken to him when I played against his sides at Burton and Sheffield United and knew what kind of guy he was.

“On the pitch he just wanted us to get the ball down and play, be confident and just go out and win games.

“He wanted us to know how to win games, do the dirty stuff, run hard, play well and get results.

“Results then picked up for us, though we all knew where we finished that season was not good enough.

“But, going forward, we knew we'd seen enough in that just over half a season with him that things were going to get a lot better and we would do good things.

“As players we took confidence from that and obviously in the following seasons the club went on to get promoted and are sustainable in League One, which is great.

“The next season we did not start well. But the manager has seen everything in football before and did not dwell on it. He still installed that positivity that you could go on and win the next game.

“It's never doom and gloom with him. All teams have those patches and he knew we'd come through the other side of it.

“When you can't win a game for love nor money it's hard to imagine ending up at Wembley as we did, but training remained positive and the manager believed in us.

“The final proved an anti-climax and, having lost on the Saturday, it felt hard to celebrate Forest's promotion for me on the Sunday. I was caught between emotions.

“I learned in my career to forget bad results and put them to bed. I used to dwell on them quite a bit when I was younger.

“But when you get a bit older and more experienced you realise you can't do anything about it after the final whistle apart from forget about it and move onto the next one.

“The next season was another tough one plagued by injuries and we missed out on the play-offs by one goal which was a killer.

“I didn't know that would be my last season at the time. I was disappointed it didn't end on a high as I would have loved to be there when Mansfield did get promoted as, at that stage of my career, it would have finished it off nicely.”