OPINION: Keep the faith . . . patience WILL be rewarded with promotion for Mansfield Town

It can so often turn sour after a ‘what might have been season’ is followed by a very forgettable season with sides struggling to maintain the standards and desire levels of the year before.

We’ve seen it before at the One Call Stadium with a woeful 21st-place finish being recorded in the 2019/20 campaign after Mansfield’s promotion push self-imploded the season before.

Stags, though, will next season have the advantage of continuity with Nigel Clough, the Radfords and David Sharpe all keeping their focus on the long-term goal.

The powers that be have always spoken on sticking to the long-term goals and putting blocks in place to progress, with Clough previously using Cheltenham as a good example of a club who slowly but surely developed into a promotion-winning side.

Clear progress has been made since Clough took charge following the failures of the John Dempster and Graham Coughlan eras and the biggest challenge of making final stepping stone now awaits in Clough’s second full season in charge.

Mansfield have been in the League Two for nine seasons now and Cloughie’s pre-season recruitment will need to be bang on if it isn’t to extend into a tenth season.

Key to those plans will no doubt be the spine of the team and whether Nathan Bishop and Matty Longstaff will return to their parent clubs.

It’s most likely that they will head back home, leaving Clough needing to scour the market to bring in two more hot prospects from a Premier League or Championship club on a season-long loan.

But perhaps the biggest task for Clough is to finally bring in a proven goal-scorer, which Stags have been lacking since Tyler Walker’s 21 goals in the 2018/19 campaign.

Rhys Oates was Mansfield’s most prolific marksmen this season with just 12 goals, compared to 14 for Exeter’s Matt Jay, 16 goals for Aaron Collins of Bristol Rovers and 23 goals for Matt Stevens of Forest Green Rovers.

Of course every club wants a top striker - we all know that goals win games - but Clough can be confident of the financial backing from the Radfords as he looks to craft a promotion winning squad.

But while Clough can put together a team capable of winning games, next season’s crop of players must help themselves out by improving their discipline levels.

Seven regular season red cards and, of course, a very very costly play-off final red card cannot be allowed to continue.

Stags certainly can’t allow themselves to feel sorry for themselves. We’ve seen the cost of a slow start this time out and Mansfield will certainly need to come out of the blocks much faster to prevent handicapping themselves once again.

Things look rather depressing, maybe even bleak, as we wake up the morning after a painful Wembley defeat.

The fixture list will not make the greatest of reading either as we look ahead to games against the likes of Crewe and Doncaster instead of Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday.

But Exeter City’s success this year can act as the inspiration to keep the belief going.

The Grecians won’t have felt great after a play-off final defeat in 2017, they will have felt even worse after another play-off final defeat in 2018.

The 2019/20 campaign ended in yet another play-off final defeat for City - by which time they probably thought the promotion dream would never happen.

They kept at the process, they kept working hard, they kept the faith and this season they finally got their reward.

Nigel Clough is simply far too good of a manager and the Radfords far too successful for the trio to not finally crack the nut and guide Stags into League One.

Keep the faith . .. promotion WILL come.

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