The birds are singing and the rain has abated. Nigel Clough and his wife, Margaret, are taking their dog, Bobbie, for a long peaceful walk around the beautiful Derbyshire reservoir of Carsington Water. Looming on the horizon for the Mansfield manager is an FA Cup fifth-round tie at home to Arsenal but Clough knows the importance of staying, as he puts it, in the “real world”.
The TNT cameras and global media will home in on Field Mill on Saturday lunchtime as the Premier League leaders visit the second lowest-ranked survivors in the competition that Brian Clough, Nigel’s legendary father, famously never lifted. Clough Jr will have his League One players prepared and organised but would prefer to eschew the fanfare. After Mansfield’s memorable win at Burnley in the last round, he left post-match media duties to Andy Garner, his assistant. “I just went to see the kids,” he says. “The away fans were coming out right next to the changing rooms, so I thought I might just catch them on the way out.”
Perhaps this authenticity explains why Clough has never managed in the top flight but also why the former Nottingham Forest and England striker has overseen more games – 1,583, he says – than any other current league manager. “More like a lack of ability to manage at that level,” he counters. “And to manage in the Premier League now, I think you have to be a special sort of person to deal with that scrutiny as well.”
Clough reveals another walk around Carsington is scheduled for the next morning, 10 days after his last. “That’s the real world that I want to live in. For all this: ‘What did you do before the game? What did you do after the Burnley game?’ Well, the real world is you go and see the kids and ask if they had a good time. That’s the real world. And if you get half a day off, go and walk round Carsington Water with your wife and the dog. That’s the real world, not the spectacle of going out in front of 10,000 people, 40,000, whatever. I don’t class that as my real world. I don’t mean it’s false. But for me real life is home, family and life outside of football.”
This week, that has included taking time to visit football journalism students at the University of Derby, with four of his players. The laughter and warmth in the auditorium reflect how Clough builds a family feel at Mansfield. Which is appropriate given that five of the players’ partners are pregnant. “The gaffer always lets us have time off to go to a scan or what have you,” Liam Roberts, the goalkeeper, says. “It’s this attitude that helped convince me to sign for the club last summer. We went to the pub, had a couple of pints and I knew I wanted to join. That and Bobbie the dog.”
The Hungarian vizsla is Mansfield’s unofficial “therapet”, much like Win at Arsenal. Bobbie is usually at training, where the players take turns to walk him. “They have an incredibly calming influence,” Clough says. “It benefits everybody.”
Clough came out with his tail between his legs on the last occasion he managed a team against Mikel Arteta, who was Pep Guardiola’s assistant when Manchester City beat Burton 9-0 in the League Cup in 2019. But 20 years ago Manchester United, in their pomp, were held 0-0 in the FA Cup third round by Clough’s Burton. “And we should have had a penalty for handball,” Clough recalls. “Howard Webb admitted it later. Everyone was shouting for it – apart from Ben Robinson, our chairman. He wanted the replay.”
It is a disappointment to Clough that there are no Cup replays any more, squeezed out by the elite’s expanding international schedule. The reported £800,000 Burton made from going to Old Trafford gave them “the foundation for the next 10-15 years”, he says. “They would not be where they are now without that one game.”
That recollection “gives you hope”, says Clough, as does Macclesfield’s third-round win over the holders, Crystal Palace. “[Their] exploits have reignited everybody’s passion for the FA Cup. The fact that someone from six leagues down can knock out the holders is incredible. [That can happen in] no other country.”
Video assistant referee technology enters the FA Cup this round – “It’s inappropriate to say the least,” Clough says. “You either play it all the competition or you don’t play it at all” – though Mansfield are not expecting any undue favours from set pieces against the team who extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to seven points when beating Brighton in another match marred by accusations of gamesmanship. Clough will not be filling his players’ heads with too much focus on Arsenal. “We can’t know what sort of team they’ll pick,” he says. “When you’re trying to win the Premier League and the Champions League, the FA Cup will be down the pecking order. With their 25-man squad, they could pick any 11 to wipe the floor with us without breaking sweat.
“We can watch Arsenal for their last 10 games. It would just frighten the life out of us. We’ll do some rudimentary work on corners. We know roughly how they’re going to come in, whatever their personnel. But if top Premier League teams can’t deal with them, I don’t know how a bottom-half League One side is meant to. I don’t want the players worrying unduly. There’s only one ball coming in at any one time. Deal with it.”
Clough, who turns 60 this month, says the first two rounds of the Cup, which brought a late win against Harrogate and victory on penalties at Accrington, were much more stressful than the triumphs over Sheffield United and Burnley. “I’m not playing this game down, because this is the first time Mansfield have played in the fifth round of the FA Cup in 51 years, but this is a free hit for us. We want to stay in League One, so in some ways this is our least important game in the next two months. Reading, next Tuesday, is more important. But don’t come off thinking: ‘No, it was Arsenal, Burnley, whoever it is, and we should have done a bit more.’ Just go for it.”
Clough is disappointed the rain has stopped in the East Midlands this week but, still, it is unlikely Arsenal will have played on such a muddy pitch for some time. His perspective of what success looks like on Saturday varies from “not getting thrashed” to “getting through to the next round” but he accepts the most realistic interpretation is how Mansfield are perceived.
“It’s such a huge event, an honour in so many ways, having the Premier League leaders coming to the One Call Stadium in the fifth round of the FA Cup, so how do we handle that as a club, in adversity or whatever happens on the day? It’d be important, that as much as the result: how we deal with being in the spotlight.”
The spotlight always loved Brian Clough. Perhaps his father’s fame – the most outspoken manager of his era, the “greatest manager England never had” – ushered Nigel away from centre stage.
“I couldn’t be like that, or replicate what he was,” Clough says. “Growing up in the 1970s, if Mike Yarwood [the foremost TV impressionist back then] was doing an impression of you on a Saturday night, you were one of the 10 most famous people in the country. When you’re growing up, that doesn’t strike you. But recognising that looking back, there’s probably an inclination to veer away from it.
“I went to the local comprehensive, at Woodlands, round the corner from here in Derby. When your dad’s manager of Nottingham Forest, that isn’t always easy. Our parents were working class. Footballers are incredibly privileged in what they do and incredibly well paid. But it doesn’t mean you have to change as a person.”
Clough will be back at Carsington soon. But first, after more than three hours sharing the limelight to help nurture young people, he heads back home to mow the lawn.
