Graham Coughlan appointed Mansfield boss

Graham Coughlan has been appointed the new manager of Mansfield after leaving Bristol Rovers on Tuesday morning.

Coughlan led Rovers to fourth place in Sky Bet League One but departed his role to take up the vacant post with the Stags, created when John Dempster was dismissed on Saturday.

Mansfield are currently 18th in Sky Bet League Two, seven points above the relegation zone following a five-match winless streak in the league.

“This is a massive opportunity and a massive chance for me. The main attraction was the ambition of the chairman (John Radford),” Coughlan told the Mansfield website.

“How he spoke, the ambition he was displaying, the facilities at the club, it was a tremendous and huge opportunity to take on a football club and try to get them promoted.

“I’ve gone across to the training ground and I think the facilities are better than a lot of Championship clubs’ facilities – they are very impressive.”

Coughlan, who hails from Dublin, has settled in the Sheffield area after spells at Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham during his playing career and cites the proximity of the club to his family home as a major draw.

“The opportunity to manage a club like Mansfield Town, with the ambition at this football club, the facilities, and of course to be able to be at home with my wife and kids, was an absolute mammoth attraction,” he added.

“I’ve been living in this part of the country for the best part of 20 years and it’s an honest, hard-working area – that’s what I am and that’s the background I’ve come from.

“That’s all we drummed into the players at Bristol Rovers. If you’re not honest and you’re not hard-working, you won’t have any place at this football club.

“We will be honest, we will be hard-working and we will wear that jersey with pride. That’s all I ask of the players.”