'Relieved' Mansfield Town manager Nigel Clough backs Chesterfield for promotion

Clough’s Stags beat the Spireites 2-0 on Tuesday night in the Carabao Cup first round at the SMH Group Stadium but the scoreline does not tell the full story. The Blues dominated the first-half but could not find a way past the heroic Liam Roberts in the Mansfield goal. Rhy Oates’ second minute strike put the visitors in front and they grabbed a second on the hour which took the sting out of Chesterfield’s game.

It was the first derby day between the two teams in seven years and Clough is hoping they can go head-to-head again next season in the third tier.

He said: "I think we will be playing – I hope we are – Chesterfield next year because it means we will still be in League One. I think they will be as well.”

Clough admitted he was ‘relieved’ to progress in the competition after coming under intense pressure in the first-half, with Roberts saving superbly from Armando Dobra, Ronan Darcy and Chey Dunkley.

He explained: “It was incredibly hard work and I thought we had to rely upon our goalkeeper who made several outstanding saves and kept us in the game. There were four or five excellent ones. But in the second-half he had very little to do.”

Oates exchanged passes with Dom Dywer before neatly finishing into the far corner on two minutes and after surving wave after wave of attacks in the first 45, they doubled their lead when Will Evans intercepted a pass from Dunkley and fired in.

"It was lovely to get that early goal, we got our noses in front, but I thought for the rest of the half Chesterfield dominated,” Clough continued. “I thought we had a couple of situations but the movement of their front four caused us a lot of problems. I don’t we did it (defended) particularly well which is why they got through so many times. We had a chat at half-time and reorganised. We had been through things yesterday and we knew about the movement but everything goes out of the head sometimes in this atmosphere. You have got to play with a cool head and we did not do that in the first-half. We got pulled all over the place.

"The second goal gave us a lift and deflated the stadium in general. For the next 10 or 20 minutes we kept things pretty quiet. They had nothing major after that. I thought as the game wore on, inevitably they found it more difficult to bring us down.”

Clough’s men were more comfortable after the second goal and the Stags boss said their endeavour won them the game rather than their quality.

He added: "That is what won us the game. We weren’t brilliant football-wise but we really dug in. I would say they were favourites with us coming here tonight. We showed a lot of character.”