Nigel Clough remains grounded after Mansfield hammer promotion rivals Carlisle

Level-headed Mansfield boss Nigel Clough admitted his side had achieved “nothing yet” after hammering League Two promotion rivals Carlisle 4-0.

Clough’s on-fire Stags had the points wrapped up before half-time as they ran riot at Brunton Park.

Goals from captain Ollie Clarke, Alfie Kilgour, Lucas Akins and Elliott Hewitt did the damage on a Valentine’s night to remember for the travelling fans.

Clough’s charges cut the gap between themselves and third-placed Carlisle to just three points with their biggest win of the season as they inflicted back-to-back home defeats on the hosts for the first time in a year.

But the experienced boss said: “We’ve done nothing yet because we’ve got 16 games to go and 48 points to play for.

“All I’m interested in now is getting a performance and a result on Saturday.

“It’s been a great week so far with two clean sheets but there’s 16 games to go, there’s no music in the dressing room. We’re not celebrating anything.

“The focus has to be the last 16 games starting at Tranmere on Saturday. That’s the only way we’ll achieve what we want to do.”

On the performance which led to an emphatic win, Clough added: “It’s been coming. Everything sort of clicked tonight for us.

“We put our chances away very clinically in the first half.

“We set out our stool early on and said we weren’t going to sit back and we did that from the first minute.

“Once we score the first one, we say to the lads to look for the second. Sometimes the best way to look after the result is by going to get the second one.

“We’ve never been a team where we’ve relied on one person for goals and that showed.

“We’re getting the balance right now, especially defensively. The back five looked really strong.”

Paul Simpson’s side were stunned on home turf, but they remain in the top three after Northampton also slipped up as they were shut out by AFC Wimbledon.

The shell-shocked Cumbrians boss said: “I think we’re all asking the same question, we don’t know the answer where that came from.

“I know what happened, we made so many individual errors and didn’t win enough duels.

“There was lots of things wrong and it was a 45 minutes where we got well and truly turned over by a good Mansfield team.

“We knew they were a good team before they turned up tonight, but I didn’t expect us to play like that for 45 minutes.

“I don’t care who you’re playing, where you’re playing or what level you’re playing…you can’t afford to do the things that we were doing in the first half and still be in the game.

“They turned us over and we have to deal with that. It’s disappointing and it’s the first time I’ve had to say that this season.

“As a group, they’ve earned the right to be third in the table before this game, unfortunately we went away from it and went away from doing things we have been doing.”