Evans '˜fairly confident' of new faces before the weekend

Mansfield Town boss Steve Evans is '˜fairly confident' he will bring in new faces before the weekend as next Wednesday's January transfer window deadline nears.
Mansfield Town manager Steve Evans - Pic By James WilliamsonMansfield Town manager Steve Evans - Pic By James Williamson
Mansfield Town manager Steve Evans - Pic By James Williamson

Evans has stayed patient in his chase for fresh blood as Stags stayed pace with the promotion-chasers after a thrilling late 3-2 home win over Cheltenham Town.

One of his almost completed deals was this week left up in the air with the manager of the player’s club dismissed. But others are moving slowly towards final decisions.

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“I have a meeting set with the chairman and chief executive. There are lots of things we have to go through,” said Evans.

“I don’t think we’re going to take too long talking about the offers we’ve had (for Stags players) as I’ve already said no.

“Carolyn Radford will give us an update of where we are as she is having conversations with directors of other clubs and agents. It can take a lot to bring them around.

“But we’ve got a long time – we’ve got 10 days. I’ve been sat on deadline day when we’ve got 10 seconds to send an email to register a player back in my days at Rotherham. Then you sit and sweat as to whether you’ve done it or not.

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“But we don’t want to be here on the last minutes of deadline day. We will try to do some business this week – but it has to be the right business.”
Ahead of Saturday’s trip to Morecambe, he added: “I am fairly confident we’ll see some movement before the weekend.

“I am fortunate that I work for a family that want Mansfield Town to be so successful - and they want us to do it in a really structured way.

“So we have to make sure between myself and Carolyn that when we go to the chairman we go with something that makes it simple for him to say yes.

“On the odd occasion he’s said no. But no one knows John Radford better than Carolyn Radford – that’s for sure – so I am hopeful when we go to him with some things this week that our chairman will be in a position that he wants to support myself and Carolyn and help us get it over the line.

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“We were close on one but, without talking out of turn, they’ve not got a manager now. So it may have changed. We need to wait and see.

“Carolyn has got closer on the others. We’re just waiting for the CEO to say we can do a deal with his agent for the player and on another we are waiting to hear if the chairman will accept our loan proposal.”