Mansfield Town boss Nigel Clough looks back on a brilliant 2024 with great pride despite it ending in defeat at Reading

Will Evans had got Stags back into the game just before the break, but in the end they lost and frustratingly have now never beaten bogey side Reading away in 25 attempts.

“I look back on the year with great pride – we have to,” he said.

“We have had an unbelievable 12 months.

“It has been entertaining and we have really enjoyed it for the most part.

“So it was frustrating to finish the calendar year today with this result, though not the performance.

“It felt like the run of defeats we had a few weeks ago when we lost five on the spin, which we didn't deserve to.

“We are still in that run where we have to do everything right.

“But overall it has been a brilliant, brilliant 12 months.

“We had more than enough situations today and I was very pleased with our general performance away to a top six side.

“You look around here, this is a Premier League set-up, and we have more than matched them.

“If you'd said at the start of this year that we'd have been coming here on 29th December, having got promoted and been in the top half of the league, we would certainly have snapped your hand off for that.

“It is a brilliant measure of how far we have come that we can come here today and play like that.

“You saw the reaction of our supporters at the end. To a man they were singing and giving us a standing ovation. That means so much as they recognise what we have put in today.

“We have taken the game to Reading, given everything, and not quite come out on the right side of the result.

“But we came very close again.”

Clough believes his side deserved at least a share of the spoils today.

“I think we deserved something from it,” he said.

“We gave away two scrappy goals, which was disappointing, especially the second one, having got back in it just before half-time.

“It was just little things today that stopped us – the overall performance again was good, though we didn't put the ball into the box enough in the last few minutes.

“I thought we were the better footballing side today. We had more than enough of the ball today.

“We looked a bit lethargic for the first 15 minutes and we let them get a goal.

“But then we got moving and deserved the equaliser.

“That gave us a huge lift – and we deserved to go on level as well.

“We wanted to come out second half and take it on from there, which we did.

“But we gave a silly free kick away – Will chased back 60 yards and made a poor tackle. Then the ball was bobbling around in our penalty area and we were a bit unfortunate with everything.

“Christy got a hand on it then someone got a head on it.

“Sometimes you get away with those, today we didn't.

“We had similar situations in their six yard box – Lucas (Akins) had a few – but it didn't quite drop.

“Even at the end I thought one was going to drop to Frazer (Blake-Tracy) but their lad made a great last ditch tackle.”

Mansfield now prepare to welcome Bolton Wanderers on New Year's Day and Clough said: “We are looking forward to it.

“We will certainly get a few fresh legs out there.

“Having played so well on Boxing Day we had to go with the same team today, though Elliot Hewitt and Baily Cargill were really feeling it, Baily with his ankle.

“But generally I thought everyone looked okay and the substitutes came on and gave us a bit of a lift as well.

“It was absolutely brilliant to get Lee Gregory back on the pitch for 20 minutes today and hopefully there will not be too many knocks from this afternoon and they will all be available for New Year's Day.”

Stags will check on striker Rhys Oates, who missed out today with a knock.

“Rhys got a knock in the sending off at Peterborough,” said Clough.

“The lad just caught him as he was going through. I think it was his groin/pelvis area and he was not good enough to be on the bench today.”