Mansfield Town boss Steve Evans praises Carolyn Radford for her business skills

While everyone is delighted to see owner John Radford’s finances backing Evans’ war chest, with 10 new faces in already, Evans said Carolyn Radford’s work had been invaluable.

“The final bits get done between Carolyn Radford and the agents of the players,” he said.

“I must admit we’ve been very lucky in the sense that Carolyn has been able to negotiate one or two things like David Mirfin that I possibly thought we wouldn’t quite be able to get that done.

“She has managed to do it, so my grateful thanks to the chairman and the chief executive.

“She is in today and she’s been all over. We can all talk about John Radford forever, and so we should, but she deserves enormous credit.

“She is answering the phone from me at six in the morning and 12 at night talking about players and systems and deals and projects. “Our chief executive doesn’t get anywhere near the stretch of credit she deserves for her business acumen and how we’ve got some things over the line.”

Evans continued: “I said when I first met them that I had to believe there would need to be something in place that would give us a chance to fight for promotion.

“They’ve made it clear they want a team that can do that.

“It’s not about being runaway league leaders or favourites in the betting and all that nonsense. There are much bigger clubs with much bigger resources than what we’ve got.

“But we are trying to be prudent and the one thing I’ve come to know with Carolyn Radford is she knows what 50p means. She knows 50p is 50p. But they have been fantastic.

“They are trying their level best to make sure they help us in every way they can.”

Evans admitted they had told him one or two of his possible signings were well beyond the current budget.

“There are one or two things I have asked, of course that were just beyond where we should be and they’ve quite rightly said that’s not for us at the moment. ‘At the moment’ was the best part of the conversation,” he smiled.

“You think okay, maybe I stretched that a little bit. But you work with people, not against them. As a manager I’m only as good as my players and we’re all only as good as the owners.”