Graham Coughlan unveiled as new Mansfield Town manager

The 45-year-old had officially left League One Bristol Rovers in a healthy fourth place earlier in the day with the media at both ends expecting him to join the struggling Stags, who sacked John Dempster last weekend.

Succeeding ex-Stag Darrell Clarke in 2018 he had lifted Rovers from the relegation zone to a promotion chase, with a win rate of 45 per cent - losing just 13 of his 56 matches in charge.

Coughlan is delighted to get a job at an ambitious club within reach of his wife and family in Sheffield and smiled: “This is a massive opportunity and a massive chance for me. The main attraction was the ambition of the chairman.

“The opportunity to manage a club like Mansfield Town, with the ambition at this football club, the facilities, and of course to be able to be at home with my wife and kids, was an absolute mammoth attraction.

“I’ve been living in this part of the country for the best part of 20 years and it’s an honest, hard-working area – that’s what I am and that’s the background I’ve come from.

“That’s all we drummed into the players at Bristol Rovers. If you’re not honest and you’re not hard-working, you won’t have any place at this football club.

“We will be honest, we will be hard-working and we will wear that jersey with pride. That’s all I ask of the players.

“We have a tremendous group of players here that are just not functioning. We need to ask questions and find out why they are 18th in League Two.”

In his playing days, the 45-year-old featured as an uncompromising centre back for the likes of Plymouth Argyle, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham United and Shrewsbury Town, and won the PFA Second Division Player of the Year award in the 2003/04 season as well as three promotions.

The Stags new boss will take his first training session tomorrow morning, before meeting the media at a news conference at One Call Stadium at 1pm.