Clough's longevity: landmark achievement or indictment on football?

Becoming the longest-serving manager at a club takes some doing in the fickle world of football.

Sticking around at two clubs long enough to hold that mantle is just about unprecedented.

But Mansfield Town's Nigel Clough is about to redefine longevity as a manager when it comes to working at sides that make up the top 92 in the English pyramid.

"I don't think it's particularly an achievement; I think it's more an indictment of football that nobody else has lasted that long," Clough told BBC Sport.

This weekend he becomes the longest-serving manager – in terms of active years in the job and league matches at the helm – of the Stags, where he surpasses club great Ian Greaves.

The 16 years Clough spent at Burton Albion, which took in around 900 matches across two spells spanning more than two decades, means the record at the east Staffordshire side is already his.

Former England forward Clough is now six years and one week into the Stags job and is the second longest-serving manager across England's top four leagues - behind only Mikel Arteta at Arsenal - but he does not see his staying power as anything special.

"I don't really think about it that much, I have to say. I'm just trying to get through the week," said Clough, who has been in charge of Mansfield for 329 matches across all competitions.

While Clough's players, as well as Mansfield fans have a different take on what his lengthy tenure at the One Call Stadium has meant, the 60-year-old reeled off the names of legendary past managers - his late father and iconic Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough included - when reflecting on what joy clubs would have by sticking by their manager.

"When you look back 20 or 30 years, my dad was at Forest for 18 years, Alex Ferguson was at Manchester United for so long and then there was Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. That was at the top level, but even lower down there was a lot of managers who stayed a lot of years," he said

"I just think it's sad the way football is going at the moment. The first bad period that people have, a month, two months or something like that, and the manager is the one that goes."

Clough, who played in the top flight for Forest, Liverpool and Manchester City, has been in management for 28 years and been in charge of just four clubs - Mansfield, Burton, Derby County and Sheffield United - in that time.

Since bounding from non-league level - where he spent the first 10 years of his management career in his first spell at Burton - to take the reins of Derby in the Championship in 2009, no-one has overseen more matches than Clough's 893 across England's top four divisions.

The latest statistics from the League Managers' Association show that managers across those leagues are now staying in their jobs for less than a year on average.

Clough bucking the trend with his record-setting endurance at Mansfield comes in the same week that Manchester United sacked Michael Carrick, when he was 10 months into the job, and Crystal Palace relieved Pierre Sage of his role after only 16 games.

When asked if Clough has ever felt his job was under threat during any "sticky period" at Mansfield, he responded with a firm "of course".

It was when the Stags were in the relegation places and on a 12-match winless run in his first full campaign in charge in 2021-22.

He survived that, then oversaw a club-record 11 consecutive home wins and went on to guide Mansfield to the League Two play-off final at Wembley later the same season.

"You've got to go through that period and you've got to get through it," Clough said of dealing with difficult runs as a manager.

"And I think as you get a little bit older, you know more that it's going to change.

"You get a result out of adversity as much as anything. If you're winning, it doesn't keep going, and if you're losing it's the same thing if you've got a reasonable team and you're doing the right things."

While Mansfield missed out on promotion when they took their bid all the way to the national stadium in 2022, they went up automatically two years later when they finished third in the table.

It ended Mansfield's 21-year absence from the third tier. And when he kept them up in their first season back, Clough did what no-one had done for 35 years.

Last season they finished 10th, the club's highest league placing since 1987 when Greaves guided them to exactly the same position in the standings.

Stags supporter Dean Foulkes says it "has been an incredible journey" at Mansfield since Clough took the helm in November 2020.

The feeling tracks.

At Burton he is a club legend for the way he transformed the Brewers as a non-league side in his first spell there before taking them to the Championship during his second stint.

He leapt a number of divisions when he left Burton the first time to manage Derby - a particularly poignant job as his father took the Rams to their first English title in 1972.

Even at Sheffield United, where Clough had the shortest stint of his managerial career, he guided them to the semi-final of the FA Cup when they were a League One side in 2014.

"He is really good football man to have around. We should be proud that he is Mansfield Town manager," Foulkes told BBC Radio Nottingham.

"Look at what he has achieved, promotion, and we now have players coming to Mansfield Town because they want to play for Nigel Clough."

It is why prolific veteran forward David McGoldrick moved there in the summer, and how the club has enticed former Leeds United forward Tyler Roberts, as well as ex-Preston forward Michael Smith to the Nottinghamshire town while also landing highly-rated Tottenham midfielder George Abbott on loan.

Ryan Sweeney says the chance to play for Clough was "the main reason" he decided to return to the club last summer.

Former Nottingham Forest and Southend striker Stephen McLaughlin says Clough "manages differently to any other manager" he has worked with.

"He doesn't treat you as a number, he treats you as a person and you want to run though bricks walls for him," McLaughlin said.

"It's hard to explain what he does for you on and off the pitch as well. You are not on the grass too long in training because he trusts you to get your work in and to be ready for Saturday.

"He doesn't give too much tactical information to people because the message is 'just do your job and work hard'."

Jordan Bowery has been asked to do that more than most, having been transformed from a striker to a defender and is now seen as 'Mr Versatile'.

"He is incredibly loyal and trusts me in those positions," Bowery said. "A lot of managers wouldn't do that, but he's had my back and I appreciate that.

"He can get onto you, but that is like most managers. He expects and demands the best out of every single one of you each day.

"He has obviously been around the game a long time, played at the highest level - he knows the game and he knows the players."

And Clough, the player, is a former attacker of considerable repute in Nottinghamshire.

No-one has scored more than Clough's 131 goals for Forest over the past 113 years.

It was there, at Mansfield's high-profile county neighbours, where he thrived under his father who famously guided the Reds to the First Division title in 1978 before collecting back-to-back European Cups.

The manager that Clough is has been shaped by the successes he watched up close as a child and those he later revelled in as a player.

"When you're brought up in the household that we were brought up in and the environment we were brought up in, then we have a certain insight into what it takes to have a chance of being successful and what you expect of the team and everything," he said.

"And the empathy, I don't think you should ever forget that if you've been a player as well, how that feels when you have a rough time and so on."

And it is those players, and how they are found before investing in them that is the closest thing to revealing the secret to Clough's longevity.

"We don't like wasting the owners' money," he said.

"Whether it was at Burton when we were in the Dr Martens South [non-league level] or whether it's here at Mansfield Town, we try and look after it as best we can. And we have a responsibility to do that.

"We do as much in-depth research as we can on players. Character is the main feature of what we look at. We can see all the stuff on the videos of what they can do, then we watch them live and everything, but you have to delve really into the character and get a lot of references from players, coaches, managers.

"We take that very seriously. Each season we set out to just try and get a few better players in the squad.

"It's keeping the ball rolling, keeping the owners happy, keeping the supporters happy."