No new faces for Stags before Cardiff

Although much work is going on behind the scenes chasing Steve Evans’ main targets, the manager said today that all attention has to now be on Saturday’s FA Cup trip to Cardiff City.

But he did stress there was still plenty in his war chest coffers, thanks to sterling work by Stags chief executive Carolyn Radford in the summer, and she is again leading his negotiations.

“There will be nothing before Saturday. We have Cardiff to focus on,” he said.

“Our chief executive is much like the elegant swan - she is on top of the water, but really paddling furiously below it to make some things happen for us.

“Carolyn is doing a shed-load of work on this and I am obviously on the other end of the phone to be saying yes or no. We are making some progress but we are not there yet.

“John and Carolyn Radford are working hard for us now on the players we like.

“But these things never happen overnight and, usually, if they are going to improve us, there are probably a number of other clubs who think they might improve them too.”

He added: “They may not come to anything. We have to hope we can get one or two over the line.

“I’m sure we’ll do some business next week but, if we didn’t strengthen, our squad is an excellent squad as it is.”

However, players deemed unlikely to figure in the first team in the near future could go out at any time.

“There is always a case that people may go out as we have had a number of people come on to us, which you pass to players and their agents,” said Evans.

“There will be two or three go out - but we don’t need to get them out before we bring in.

“That might tell our supporters we’ve not spent the money in the summer that some people think we’ve spent.

“We’ve got plenty of money left in our budget. So give some credit to the work that Carolyn Radford did in the summer as it was fantastic. She gets no credit for that.”

Evans continued: “The FA Cup has to take priority. Of course there are a lot of clubs with no game this weekend – they are out. But I think a lot of it will happen next week.

“It’s a difficult few days that lay ahead for Carolyn Radford, not for me. She has to be able to try to get some deals done.

“We are certainly hopeful of doing things in the early part of next week. But we won’t sign for the sake of signing.

“Not everyone, but our recruitment has largely been good, and we aim to make sure we’re improving.”