Mansfield Town chairman John Radford says it is the responsibility of the players that they failed to achieve promotion last season. Radford, along wife Carolyn, were speaking to supporters at a ‘Evening with the Radfords’ club function (Mansfield Chad report).
Lincoln City earned the final play-off position in Sky Bet League Two last season, with Mansfield ending three points behind. The Stags had looked certainties for at least a play-off spot earlier in the season under Steve Evans, who then left to take on the managerial role at Peterborough United, which is where he lived.
When Evans departed, David Flitcroft was hired from Swindon Town to help them achieve promotion. They won only two of their final 13 matches, to essentially blow any chance they had of returning to Sky Bet League One, which was their pre-season aim. Radford however believes the players are to blame,
“If you change the leader mid-stream it’s always going to cause problems.
“They have to adopt a new style and a new way of being managed. It could work out fantastic, but there could always be problems.
“David did what he could with the squad he had and, you don’t know, Evans could have been here and done a lot worse.
“You can’t say it’s the manager. Ultimately it’s the squad that go out there and play on that field. They were the same players.”
Carolyn also interjected, expressing that it was hard for the players to experience a managerial change unexpectedly at that particular stage of the campaign. Also, she believes it was more a case of a ‘combination of factors’ as to why they ended the season as poorly as they did.
