Nigel Clough wants Mansfield Town to make One Call Stadium a tough place for away teams

Nigel Clough wants to make the One Call Stadium difficult for away teams. (Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images)

Mansfield finally picked up their first home win of the campaign in the 4-0 drubbing of Port Vale on Saturday.

But the Stags chief knows his side must rack up home wins if they are to challenge.

“It was good to get our first home win on Saturday,” he said. “It gets the monkey off our back. The longer it went the more pressure there was.

“We have to have a strong home record and we need to get more wins now.

"We have got to score goals if we are going to get out of the position we are in, so Saturday was very encouraging. A lot of things went our way.

“We want the fans to watch on the tv and look forward to watching us next season, if it is next season.

“We can still make it a tough place to come, even if there are no fans in. Hopefully we are doing that at the minute with how we start games.

“We want to start fast and put teams on the back foot. We want to make them think they are in for an uncomfortable 90 mins.”

Clough is now calling for his Stags players to keep up the standards and build on the positives - no matter what the starting line-up is.

“We want the players to just keep it going now,” he added. “It might not be the same team, but we are looking for the same performance.

“We can always look at where we can improve, but it is also good to look back at the weekend and point out why it was also a good performance.

“We want to highlight the good things they are doing and why it gets you results doing things that way.

“The players relaxed a bit on Saturday. We had a significant lead and you saw the players relax and play better.

“We want to play like that no matter what the state of the game.”

Clough is keen to see his side start to build up a head of steam as results continue to slowly improve.

"Momentum is the word," he said, “We need momentum now. It’s been a case of one step forward and two back at items and not being able to back results up.”

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