Swindon Town sought out Mansfield Town to sell Louis Reed for £25,000, according to Stags boss Nigel Clough.

Reed spent 18 months at the County Ground, arriving following his departure from Peterborough United, joining the night before Town’s season opener away to Scunthorpe United, and going on to make 39 appearances in the league that season and won the Players Player of the Year Award.

The 26-year-old was a pivotal part of the team that made it to the League Two play-offs during the 2021/22 season as the string-pulling central midfielder, scoring the late winner against Barrow AFC in the penultimate game of the season to mean Swindon’s fate was in their own hands on the final day at Walsall.

Despite scoring his penalty during the shoot-out, Swindon ultimately crashed out of the play-offs at the semi-final stage against Port Vale, meaning many of the squad that had got them there, along with head coach Ben Garner and director of football Ben Chorley, departed that summer.

During the following season under Scott Lindsey, Reed was one of the players to stick around but struggled to reach the same heights and would eventually depart for Mansfield Town for an undisclosed fee during the January transfer window.

Reed looks on course to earn promotion this season with Mansfield sitting four points clear at the top of League Two with eight games remaining, whilst Town are struggling at the other end of the table.

During a club event “An Evening with Nigel Clough”, the Stags manager discussed the importance of getting recruitment right and brought up the circumstances that led to him signing Reed as an example.

He said: “Recruitment is huge, honestly, they say the most important job a manager has is picking the team, it is, but also if you haven’t got the players to pick from then you are in trouble that way.

“So, recruitment is absolutely massive to get the right people in the building, sometimes you can’t get them when you want.

“We couldn’t get Louis Reed 12 months before [January 2022] or six months before because Swindon wouldn’t let him go.

“Then we get a call in January ‘Yes, you can have him for 25 grand or something like that’, so you snap their hands off.

“You just try and improve every time you sign a player, hopefully, and that is one of the things that people don’t see.”