Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.

Anyone arguing that the view isn’t wonderful is missing the point, despite Storm Bert’s best efforts to literally dampen the mood and blow away the cheer. To some sitting towards the back of Mansfield Town’s Ian Greaves Stand, it may only be a vista of just another English town centre, seen struggling against an economic tide on a canvas of inky November skies.

I respectfully disagree: this is England. It doesn’t matter what the town centre is like, only that it is a town centre and we can see it from here. The terraced houses of Bishop Street and Lord Street that lead directly from the ground, their names giving away that St Mark’s Church lies just beyond them. The gentle hills that begin in the distance, crisscrossing to shield the heart of north Nottinghamshire mining country (or what once was).

I particularly like the traffic lights on the A60, the queuing traffic perfectly aligned to the view and thus offering a glimpse of Saturday afternoon life for those who don’t support their local football team. We should not judge them for they have not seen the light. But they are missing out, even in this weather.

The irony of this glorious view is that, ideally, Mansfield Town season ticket holders would not be able to see it at all. Closer to the foreground is the Bishop Street Stand. First decaying, then decrepit and now barely existent at all, it is a statue to what went wrong here. Planning permission for renovation granted in 2002; closure in 2004; condemnation in 2006; just another tragedy in 13 words.

In August 2006, a routine safety inspection of the Bishop Street Stand before a pre-season friendly against Derby County discovered that two electric fires and an electric monitor had been left on in a boarded-up room, leaving the room red hot and close to igniting. A week later, residents complained that local youths had been entering the stand via a gaping hole.

You get the point: for all the local pride in sitting in your seat and seeing your town beyond your football club, embarrassment blights the view. To have one long side of your stadium closed for one year would stick in the throat. It has been two decades here and the reminder lives on.

In 2010, when current owner and local businessman John Radford bought the club for £1, Mansfield Town had lost the perceived villain but not found much luck thereafter. Keith Haslam, Mansfield’s owner until 2008, was notorious for two reasons: 1) announcing a club dividend which largely went to a company belonging to him, which he then bought the ground with and started charging the club rent 2) being punched by a supporter after the final home game of the 2007-08 season, when Mansfield were relegated from the Football League.

Radford’s arrival has heralded a new era here, but the hangover was real. On a Tuesday evening in April 2011, Mansfield drew 1-1 at home to Barrow in the Blue Square Bet Premier. The crowd that night was 1,253. It was the lowest for a league game at Field Mill since 1939, and even that had been a midweek afternoon match. That, surely, was the true nadir.

With the help of Radford’s investment, Mansfield grew away from their own desperate pain. They won the Conference in 2013 and became a League Two staple, always with ambition to be higher. They bobbed around – five managers in four years until November 2020 – but also built a new training ground and academy centre. Radford has covered all losses and completed the purchase of the stadium in 2019.

Never forget that this is a small club. That is not a slur, merely the truth. This summer, Mansfield signed striker Will Evans from Newport County for around £200,000 and it comfortably broke the club’s transfer record. They hadn’t sold a player for more than £250,000 this century until 2024. Mansfield made a profit on players again this summer.

But then they appointed Nigel Clough when they were third bottom of the Football League in 2020 and things started happening. John and his wife Carolyn, who is the club chief executive, live in Portugal and chose to let Clough get on with what he knows best with a simple mantra. “We’re happy with Nigel as long as he’s happy with us,” as Carolyn told i in May.

Clough is a fascinating figure, a staple and a leader of East Midlands football and not just because of who his Dad was. The breadth of his work is extraordinary: Clough will reach 1,500 games as manager next month, 50 more than Brian. Clough is still only 58 but has had less than 12 combined months without a job since he was 18 in an unforgiving sport. It is an enormous commitment as player, manager and player-manager, almost 2,100 matches in total.

In Clough’s first full season, Mansfield reached the League Two play-off final and were two goals and a man down after 35 minutes. The following season, they missed out on the play-offs on goal difference: +17 vs +18. Both heartbreaks could have derailed a less experienced manager, and Clough admitted to some serious doubts, but he steeled his team to make it not matter in 2023-24.

Last season was a dream. Mansfield didn’t lose their first league game until 25 November, the last team in England to remain unbeaten. They kept pace with freer-spending Stockport County and Wrexham throughout the season, scored 90 league goals and went up automatically, finishing eight points ahead of the play-off places.

Mansfield Town 0-1 Bristol Rovers (Saturday 23 November)

• Game no.: 38/92
• Miles: 66
• Cumulative miles: 6,207
• Total goals seen: 109
• The one thing I’ll remember in May: The smell of pots of mushy peas floating over the seats in the Ian Greaves Stand. This is Nottinghamshire heritage!

Back in the third tier, Mansfield have surpassed all expectations. Despite selling their top goalscorer – and probably best player – to Barnsley, they are currently tenth but with two games in hand on most of the sides above them and thus pushing for a play-off place. They won five league games on the spin in September and October.

It is not all plain sailing. On the afternoon I’m in town, Mansfield lose 1-0 to Bristol Rovers having dominated the match and the chances. They have a goal disallowed with the last kick of the game for handball. They miss out on the chance to jump into the top five and Clough’s face looks as if he has been turned to stone.

But this is virtually uncharted territory anyway; the fans around me realise that. Mansfield Town have had one second-tier season in their entire history. The last time they even survived relegation in the third tier was 1990 and football has a vastly changed landscape since. Birmingham City spent £25m on players this summer – Mansfield aren’t close to that across their entire history but the two clubs drew 1-1 at Field Mill last month. Right now, Mansfield are one of the most overachieving clubs in the EFL.

What makes this rise particularly fascinating is how Clough has shaped this squad to his preferences. Within the EFL, and particularly in Leagues One and Two, a general reliance upon experience has been partly replaced by a dependency upon the loan system and young academy graduates from clubs higher up the pyramid with a sprinkling of their own academy players and those signed on free transfers having been allowed to leave other clubs in their late-teens or early 20s.

Take Mansfield’s opponents as an example: Bristol Rovers used Josh Griffiths (on loan from West Brom), Michael Forbes (West Ham) and Gatlin O’Donkor (Oxford United). They used Shaq Forde and Kamil Conteh, aged 20 and 21. Two of their four starting defenders were Connor Taylor and Clinton Mola, both aged 23. In League One this season, 15 clubs have picked starting XIs with an average age of under 26.

Mansfield, it is fair to say, are doing things differently. On Saturday, their 11 starters were aged, in ascending order: 26, 27, 27, 29, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 35 and 38. Striker Lee Gregory missed out with injury and would have started – he is 36. Clough has picked the 13 oldest starting XIs in League One this season and Mansfield have, on average, the oldest starting XI in English professional football by a gap of almost two years per man.

But then, why not? Rather than competing with lots of other clubs for young loanees (they have only one at the club now and only signed one last season too), focus on the experience that they are all typically abandoning and restrict yourself to older free transfers. Mansfield is probably not a club that would attract a long list of Premier League loanees, save perhaps the odd one from Forest.

It requires some investment in wages from Radford, but he has proven himself willing to do so. It likely precipitates an overhaul each summer with contracts typically shorter, but then other clubs lose four or five loanees every summer anyway. It is emphatically different to others, but you cannot say that it isn’t working.

This combination of Clough and the Radfords and their core principles have changed this football club for the better and changed the town too. It matters because it is them: a boyhood Mansfield Town fan and one of the pillars of a dynastical footballing family in these parts. It matters because of how they have done it: ambition but also sense, a specific strategy and a determination to never let the worst times return.

And it matters because these are the values that seem intrinsic to Mansfield. The town with one of ten oldest populations in the country has a football club that is succeeding with the “older players” plan. They rely upon simple principles of damn hard work and neither Clough nor Radford accepts any less.

At the announcement of recommencing building work on the Bishop Street Stand in April, John Radford spoke as if stood upon a stage in front of the entire town. How could you not be inspired by this:

“Our promotion shows that hard work works. We may not be the biggest club in League One next season, but we will have the biggest hearts. Heading into new terrain next season, we shall continue to raise standards and excellence. We shall not only be good at what we all do, but outstanding. We shall head into the new league together, with a unified mentality. And, in times of trial, we shall not be discouraged but shall give everything we have.”

This club has always held a small place in my heart. With a grandmother who lived here, we would occasionally walk down High Oakham Hill and into town for a match, often the home game between Christmas and New Year. The days of Liam Lawrence, Iyseden Christie, Lee Peacock and Chris Greenacre.

Then it was the smell of Bovril. Now, that great Nottinghamian delicacy: pots of mushy peas, with or without mint sauce. The small sign in the councourses of the Ian Greaves Stand reminds of their popularity – “When they’re gone, they’re gone” – and the aroma wafts through to the seats. These are the memories that get you.

But Mansfield is also a place that wrestles for relevance because of its memories, where things sometimes can feel like they aren’t ever getting easier. It lost its mining industry and too few things replaced it. It missed out on too much of the spending that areas closer to Nottingham enjoyed, and even Nottingham is struggling now. The city has the lowest disposable household income in the UK and Mansfield is its second-most affected area by poverty, where almost a third of children live below that barrier.

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Football clubs can’t change that; they cannot repaint reality and they cannot solve problems for those here who feel ignored. But they can offer a distraction to those who come to Field Mill and they can give a population a reason to be proud of one of its social institutions.

It might all sound twee and slightly intangible, perhaps even misty-eyed nonsense, but you see the evidence in the people around you: families, children, a lack of empty seats. This stadium, without its one long empty space, has space for a shade under 7,300 home supporters. Five years ago, that wasn’t a problem. But attendances have gone up by 2,500 in three years and there are more than 6,000 season ticket holders. After promotion, they sang Clough’s name and they sang Radford’s too.

This will not last forever. Clough has said himself that he hasn’t gone a long time left in the game; even at 58 the miles on the clock make a difference to your energy. The model itself can be tempestuous, with older players coming and going. The clubs with the bigger budgets in League One will likely gravitate towards the top, such is life.

That might cause some shine to be removed, but Mansfield seem to see it differently. Why waste time worrying about what might go wrong when it’s going right at a club where it didn’t go right for too long?

Instead accept that setbacks and roadblocks will arrive, but that the owner has proven himself capable of trusting in the plan. Sit back and smile that your captain is 35, your top scorer is 36, your most creative player is 38, your manager is a veteran and the stand that has both enabled and blighted your view is slowly being rebuilt.

Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here