Let’s now get promotion completed as soon as possible says Mansfield Town boss Nigel Clough after crucial win at MK Dons

Three second half goals saw Stags home to a vital win after going behind early on and leaves them one win away from League One, though with their vastly superior goal difference, realistically a single point would do the trick.

Stags host Accrington Stanley on Tuesday night and Clough said: “Today's win puts us so close, within touching distance. We can almost taste it

“We are now nearly there, but we're not there yet. All the celebrations and everything were understandable at the end today, but we're not over the line yet.

“Hopefully it will be a good occasion on Tuesday night. We've got two opportunities with two home games. Let's get it done as early as we can.

“But it won't be easy. We've had 43 games and we've not had one easy one yet.

“If we had done our jobs a little bit better in the last couple of weeks it might have been promotion today.

“But it was great to score the three goals second half in front of our fans.

“The lads knew roughly how many fans were coming today. We talked about it as it was over 3,000.

“But when they actually saw them, they were saying on the bench I can't believe this for a League Two side. It really hit home for a few of them how much it means.

“There is now an expectation in the dressing room and Stephen Quinn would play in the morning or even tonight if he could as he will be starting Tuesday.”

Clough continued: “We came set up in a certain way to stop their four in midfield.

“Then the mistake was made by Jordan (Bowery) after 13-14 minutes and that changed the whole game.

“You're okay at 0-0 and you're waiting to see how the game plays out a little bit, but then you make an error of that sort and all of a sudden we have to change, which we were probably the better for, and we went a little bit more like our old selves. Then Elliott Hewitt got an incredibly important goal for us.

“Then we said let's go on and win it.

“Nobody deserves it more than Elliott. He could only do 60 minutes today and he was on his knees again

“It was just lovely to see him back out there. We said last week, it wouldn't normally be called into action this soon but with so many defenders injured it was needs must and he got us a hugely important goal.

“Once we got in at half-time at 1-1 it felt a bit like the Notts County game away from home.

“We quickly got the second goal though it took five or six efforts to get it over the line.

“Then it was about sitting in a little bit, breaking and restricting MK Dons as I think they are the best footballing side in the league.”

Stags finally eased the nerves with two late goals.

“We're not great believers in keeping the ball when you are 2-1 ahead or whatever – we want to get a third goal and a fourth goal or whatever and that's what we've done all season. We did it again very well today.

“We knew there would be seven or eight minutes or something like that – we never seem to get that when we're chasing.

“So they could get one at any time and then you know it's game on at 2-2, so to get the third one just completely knocked the stuffing out of them.

“Christy (Pym) had one or two saves to make but I thought we defended well in front of him.

“I think the key to it was pressing high up when we got the opportunity after the first 10 or 15 minutes and then trying to keep them as far away from our box as we could.

“But once again, Lucas (Akins) had to go to right back, George Wiilliams couldn't complete the game and we had a centre forward at centre half.

“It makes it even more special with that situation.”