We're not giving up on the play-offs yet says Mansfield Town CEO Carolyn Radford

Mansfield Town CEO Carolyn Radford believes new boss Graham Coughlan could yet still drive the struggling Stags into this season's play-offs.
Carolyn Radford with Graham Coughlan.Carolyn Radford with Graham Coughlan.
Carolyn Radford with Graham Coughlan.

Despite being 12 points adrift, Radford feels Coughlan – finally chosen from their final two outstanding candidates to replace John Dempster – is the right man to get Stags into a winning habit.

“Graham is incentivised to go out there and turn this season around, and it's not unheard of,” she said.

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“If he can galvanise this exceptionally talented group of players and get them winning, winning is contagious. The play-off places are there.

“We put so much financial support, time, effort and love, we always expect our managers to go out there and win and get three points every game.

“When we went into the play-offs last season, the players were down after going for that automatic place. Sometimes when it's the teams that just slip in there that are statistically the ones that get promoted.”

She revealed the club had been inundated with applications for the job.

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People would have been looking at our results and seeing it as inevitable something was going to happen, so we've been approached a lot by different managers,” she said.

“They look at Mansfield as a progressive and ambitious club. We've been inundated with CVs and had lots of conversations with a wide range of different managers, but ultimately it had to be a gut feeling.

“There were two particular managers we really, really wanted. Both were exceptional candidates for the job. We ended up going with our heart – and that said Graham.

“He is incredibly driven – a very humble character with a huge aura about him. He is extremely charismatic.

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“As we can see from the exceptional way he's led Bristol Rovers since January, he's got a proven ability to take a club that's not doing very well and get them up to the top of the table where they need to be,

“Our squad is a phenomenal group of players who were carefully selected and deserve to be fulfilling their potential and that of the football club.”

On sacking Dempster last weekend, she added: “It's been very busy and very chaotic as these things are. I've not slept very much. It's a very emotional time.

“It's always very sad to see a manager move on and we had a great relationship with John Dempster.

“We'd known him for over seven years, but unfortunately football is such a results-based industry that we had to take the decision, which was not made lightly, to move on.”