We Are the Damned United

by Phil Rostron

  16

  FALLEN EMPIRES

  I can’t even spell spaghetti never mind talk Italian. How could I tell an Italian to get the ball? He might grab mine.

  Brian Clough

  It is remarkable what damage the passage of time can do to a football club, and the once-great clubs managed by Clough have had their share of troubles in recent years. From winning, under Brian Clough, the league title in 1978, back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980 and the League Cup four times between 1978 and 1990, Nottingham Forest went into a tailspin. So awful was the 1992–93 season, when they won just 10 of 42 matches, that they finished wooden spoonists and found themselves in the second tier, right back where Clough had started with them 18 long years previously. As far as football was concerned, this was Clough: The End.

  The beginning had been eye-catching. Clough and Taylor had reunited to lead what was a relatively small club to those early victories in the Football League and in Europe. The pair built a strong team, with great names including Peter Shilton, Viv Anderson – the first black player to appear in a full international for England – Martin O’Neill, Trevor Francis, John Robertson, Archie Gemmill and Kenny Burns at its centre. Typically of Clough, his side won its spurs more through soul-bearing, honest endeavour than swashbuckling showmanship.

  In 1983–84, with the split from Peter Taylor fresh in Clough’s mind and no doubt weighing heavily upon him, Forest made it to the last four in the UEFA Cup but were beaten by Anderlecht in controversial circumstances. A goal was disallowed and years later it was revealed that the referee had been bribed. Clough and Forest would have to wait until 1989 before getting their hands on another major piece of silverware. During the 1988–89 season, Forest looked set to win the Treble. In the end, though they finished third in the league and were knocked out of the FA Cup in the semi-final, originally to have been played at Hillsborough. Forest did, however, beat Luton to lift the League Cup. And all this excitement was in spite of Clough having to manage affairs from the stands in the latter half of the season, when he was serving a touchline ban after hitting supporters who had invaded the pitch at the end of a cup match against QPR.

  Forest kept hold of the League Cup in 1990 and hopes were raised that they might win an even more prestigious prize the following year. They made it to the FA Cup final, the only one Clough ever steered them to. At Wembley, they took on a Tottenham Hotspur side that included Gazza, who sustained a serious injury as a result of a wild tackle on Gary Charles minutes into the game. Stuart Pearce scored a tremendous goal from the resulting free kick, but Forest lost 2–1 as a result of an extra-time own goal. Although Nottingham made it to the League Cup final yet again the following season, their league form was starting to dip.

  In fact, the 1992–93 season, Clough’s 18th with Forest, was to be his last. As one of the 22 clubs in the newly created Premier League, they failed to raise a gallop and were bottom of the table virtually throughout the season. Clough’s announcement of his retirement came just before a 2–0 defeat against Sheffield United confirmed the club’s relegation after 16 years in the top flight. One of the most colourful passages in English football history was at an end.

  Who was to replace Cloughie? This gigantic task befell Frank Clark, one of Clough’s first signings and a member of the European Cup-winning team in 1979, who returned to the City Ground, having managed Leyton Orient. He took the Reds straight back into the Premier League, gaining promotion from a second-place finish in 1993–94. Forest made an immediate impact on their return to the top flight, reaching third place and qualifying for the UEFA Cup, making it to the quarter-finals, where they were knocked out by Bayern Munich. In 1996–97, however, with the club heading for relegation, Clark was sacked and captain Stuart Pearce stepped up to become caretaker player-manager.

  ‘Psycho’ was an inspirational figure at the City Ground, and Forest’s results improved under him. Despite this, he was not offered the job on a permanent basis; instead, Dave Bassett was brought in from Crystal Palace. Forest ended the 1996–97 season in last place and were relegated once more. Again, they made it back into the Premiership at the first time of asking, topping the First Division. At the beginning of 1999, Bassett was sacked after a bad start to the season and ‘Big Ron’ Atkinson was appointed. A brief spell at Sheffield Wednesday had seen him save them from relegation, but if the board had hoped he could do the same for Forest, they were to be disappointed. At the end of the 1998–99 season, which featured an 8–1 thrashing at the hands of Manchester United, it was back down to the First Division for the Reds. His successor, David Platt, spent millions on players but couldn’t take the team back to the Premiership, and resigned in 2001, with the club struggling financially.

  Paul Hart took over immediately, but Forest were battling debt and finished 2001–02 in the bottom half of the second tier. He brought them up into the play-off zone the next year, but they missed out on a place in the top flight. Next season, the Reds slid back down the table again and Hart was replaced by Joe Kinnear. It was a brief spell at the City Ground for the Irishman, and before the end of the year, with Forest struggling against relegation, he resigned. Following another short-lived occupation of the hot seat by caretaker Mick Harford, Gary Megson was brought in. He had helped West Brom to achieve promotion to the Premier League, but he failed to pull off the same trick for Forest, and indeed the club was relegated from the new Coca-Cola Championship to League One at the end of the 2004–05 season.

  It was a new low. Forest hadn’t found themselves in the third tier for more than half a century. Megson went and joint caretaker managers Frank Barlow and Ian McParland were appointed from within to fill his place. They achieved some very good results but even a run of ten games unbeaten couldn’t lift the team higher than seventh place.

  The stability that the club had achieved under Clough looked to be lost forever. In 2006, Colin Calderwood became the 12th managerial appointment at the City Ground since Clough’s departure 13 years before. His first season began promisingly, with Forest heading the division in November. Their lead fell away, but they rallied again and made it into the play-offs. They lost to Yeovil, but it was a good start for the new manager. In the 2007–08 campaign, Forest were favourites for automatic promotion. The club got off to a bad start, but their hard work paid off and in a nail-biting final match of the season they beat Yeovil 3–2 at home, securing second place and automatic promotion to the Championship. Despite this success, Calderwood was soon sacked after Forest lost 4–2 to bottom-of-the-table Doncaster on Boxing Day 2008. Billy Davies, former manager of Preston North End and Derby County, replaced him on the first day of the New Year.

  Derby, too, endured a roller-coaster ride that plummeted them from the heights of league titles under Clough in 1971–72 and the mercurial Dave Mackay three years later to English football’s third tier in 1984.

  It was back in 1967, when England found psychedelia with Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and US activities in Vietnam were attracting global condemnation, that Clough took up the reins and set Derby County on the path to glory. Clough’s persistence in capturing Dave Mackay, whose heart had been set on the assistant manager’s job at Edinburgh club Hearts, was to be rewarded when the tough, uncompromising Scot played a leading role in Derby’s promotion to the First Division in 1969. A year later, his huge influence ensured that, far from disgracing themselves at a higher level, Derby would be a surprise package to many, and they really made their presence felt, finishing a highly creditable fourth.

  Derby were now well and truly in the big time, and in 1972 had established themselves so firmly that they were to plunder their first ever First Division title and, with it, a ticket to the European Cup. On this big stage, with its wider audience, yet more people were surprised by the ability and strength of this team from a relatively small corner of England, and they marched into a semi-final showdown with Italian giants Juventus. Clough was incensed by the manner of their defeat in a match that was t
o become notorious for allegations of bribery of the officials. ‘Cheating bastards,’ was Clough’s terse summary.

  Few on Clough’s radar, especially Football Association officials, were exempt from withering criticisms when he felt it necessary, and one too many of these for the liking of the Derby County board was to lead to a parting of the ways in 1973.

  Derby’s tilt at the top was unfettered, however, and they were to land another title in 1974–75, this time under Mackay, whose managerial ambitions had been fulfilled beyond his wildest dreams. This run of success could not be maintained, though, and when they were relegated to the Second Division in 1980, the writing had been on the wall for some time. Four years later, they had deteriorated to the extent that they were scrambling about in the third tier.

  These were the bottoming-out days. Derby escaped the clutches of the third tier at the second attempt and won the Second Division in 1986–87. Their second season back in the top flight brought a fifth-place finish, but they were to finish wooden spoonists in 1990–91 and missed out on being among the founder members of the Premier League. They were back in the big league for the 1996–97 season, but by that time the Big Four of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United were tightening their stranglehold, leaving only UEFA Cup places and the mid-table safety net to play for. Consecutive finishes of 12th, 9th, 8th, 16th and 17th were followed by relegation in 2001–02, and despite narrowly avoiding further relegation in 2004, they rose again to the Premier League for one entirely forgettable season in 2007–08, when they became the whipping boys and won just a single one of their 38 matches, scoring a mere 20 goals, conceding 89 and going down with a record low points total of 11.

  It was an embarrassing start for new chairman Adam Pearson, formerly commercial director of Leeds United and more recently owner of Hull City. Pearson had replaced manager Billy Davies with Paul Jewell early in his tenure, but Jewell required 27 attempts to engineer his first victory. A poor start to life back in the second tier created a huge dilemma for the ambitious Pearson. It was announced on 29 December 2008 that Jewell had resigned as manager, and the identity of his replacement, introduced a week later as the club’s 26th permanent manager, had the football romantics purring.

  Some 37 years after his father had led the Rams to the old Division One title, the 42-year-old Nigel Clough ended his 10-year ‘apprenticeship’ at non-league Burton Albion with the aim of putting the pride back into Pride Park. The former Nottingham Forest player and owner of 14 England caps left Burton with a 13-point lead at the top of the Blue Square Premier and observed:

  This is a fantastic opportunity for me and one that I relish. I know the club inside out. It has always had a special place in my and my family’s heart, and I know that this is one of the most exciting jobs in football. Derby County has everything – tremendous support, a first-class stadium, magnificent training facilities and an ambitious ownership group looking to grow the club even further. Also, we have a terrific squad of players already here and I can’t wait to start working with them.

  He also commented

  I am not shying away from what my dad did. It is something to embrace. I looked at all the photos here, but I’ve got them all at home, so it will be no different. What dad achieved at Derby is a nice thing, not a negative. It might be 35 years ago but supporters talk about it as though it was yesterday. Many of them are affiliated with the club because of those days. And I don’t think people will ever think of me as something other than Dad’s son. In some ways, I hope they don’t, because that would mean they have forgotten about him.

  Pearson told reporters:

  We are delighted to have Nigel on board. He is the right man for this club at this time, he has created a fine legacy at Burton and wants to do exactly the same at Derby. He sees it very much as a long-term project.

  There was no sentiment or romance involved in the appointment. You can’t have that in football. He’s tough enough to take the club forward in his own style.

  Burton chairman Ben Robinson said that he’d always known the former England striker would eventually join a bigger outfit, adding, ‘We can never repay him for what he’s done for the club.’

  Marking the new appointment in an article for the Sunday Times, Duncan Hamilton, the author of Provided You Don’t Kiss Me, recalled:

  Nigel Clough leant against the door frame of the chairman’s room at Nottingham Forest. He fiddled with his car keys, impatiently tossing them in the air and catching them. His father, Brian, was lolling across a leather sofa. He’d rolled his tracksuit bottoms as high as his knees. He looked like a holiday-maker about to paddle in the sea.

  For more than an hour, Nigel had been waiting to drive him home. At least half a dozen times, his father had told him: ‘Give me five minutes.’ Now Nigel was visibly impatient. He had an appointment to keep. ‘Ring your mother and tell her we’ll be a wee bit late,’ said Brian. ‘I might have a bath and get changed.’

  Nigel grimaced, let out a deep sigh and gripped the keys tightly in his fist. As he stomped away, Brian yelled after him: ‘Don’t lose your rag, busy bollocks. I’m coming.’ He climbed off the sofa, rubbing the stiffness out of his knee joints. ‘I think I’ve upset the chauffeur,’ he said, promptly vanishing with a quick ‘ta-ra’.

  I got to know Brian Clough well, through good times and bad, during the 20 years I covered Forest for the Nottingham Evening Post. For me, this short, inconsequential scene illustrated the fundamental contrast in character between father and son. Last week Nigel left Burton Albion to become the 15th manager to follow Brian into Derby County. As he begins the job his father abandoned in a fit of pique in 1973, a season after winning the league title – and prepares for a televised FA Cup tie against Forest on 23 January – those personality differences will become more obvious than ever. The name is the same; the style and temperament are not. Nigel brings his father’s Baseball Ground principles to Pride Park: discipline, clean sheets and neat passing. He doesn’t bring his father’s chameleon tendencies.

  Brian veered from pyrotechnical flashiness to blissful charm. He was frequently rude and could be exasperating for the sake of it. And he never wore a wrist watch. He lived in his own idiosyncratic time zone, which the rest of us worked around. To be late was his prerogative. Nigel was humbly apologetic if he delayed you for five minutes. As well as being punctual, he was also modest, polite, tolerant and well mannered.

  Those traits will shape the quiet way in which he tries to lift Derby out of relegation trouble and dispose of his and his father’s former club in the Cup. This early test is critical. The Derby–Forest rivalry isn’t just about geography or a century-long feud over bragging rights. A jealous squabble persists over which end of the A52 – the Brian Clough Way – Brian’s heart truly lies. When Nottingham unveiled with fuss and flummery their £60,000 statue of Brian eight weeks ago, a glorious piece of one-upmanship, there were anxious squeals in Derby for an identical honour, as if Nottingham were trying to steal Brian from them.

  Given Nigel’s availability and the cult of Clough, it seems odd that Forest didn’t approach him after abruptly sacking Colin Calderwood last month. The former Derby boss Billy Davies stepped in instead. Derby’s hiring of Nigel has given the black-and-whites of the East Midlands the justification to boast that Brian Clough – and now his son – truly belongs to them. Forest have missed a trick, a fact that the Cup might yet endorse.

  I suspect Brian would be chuffed at how things have worked out. He’d also be nervous on Nigel’s behalf. Irrespective of how much he achieved at Forest, the hurt and bitter regret of resigning from Derby never left him. He had an emotional attachment to Derby that Forest, despite 18 years and two European Cups, could never quite match.

  He would have viewed Nigel’s appointment both as a continuation of that intimate bond and partly as family atonement for his mistake in leaving. Shortly before his death in 2004, Brian admitted some of his heart was always with Derby: ‘I wish I’d never left.’ Wit
h Nigel back, he’ll seem to be there still.

  As a player, Nigel was that rare thing: a cerebral footballer. He read Graham Greene novels, soaked up Shakespeare’s plays. ‘He’s really more like his mother, Barbara,’ Brian frequently pointed out. ‘She likes the theatre and the ballet, things that bore the arse off me.’ He would say it with stoic acceptance, rather than regret, before adding: ‘But then our business together is football.’

  At Derby, Nigel practised shooting with title winners such as Dave Mackay, Alan Hinton and John O’Hare. At Brighton, he sat in the dugout.

  At Forest, he made his League debut on Boxing Day 1984, aged 18. I’ve always believed Brian, more than anybody else, struggled to handle his son’s emergence as a goal-scorer. He had more difficulty than Nigel’s coaches, the other players and Nigel himself. Brian fretted over claims of nepotism. He worried that Nigel would be deliberately hacked down and injured (which is why he played under a pseudonym for Forest’s youth team). He was concerned the crowds might bait him purely because he was his son. ‘The sins of fathers,’ he said, ‘shouldn’t be heaped on the shoulders of the sons . . . but he’ll get a fair amount of that in any case, no matter what I say.’ Privately, he was ‘our Nige’ and Brian talked of him at length not only as a boss but also as an exceptionally proud father. ‘He’s brave . . . and he thinks, which is an asset ’cos brainy footballers are better than thick ones.’

  Publicly, Brian wouldn’t call Nigel by his Christian name. He was either ‘the number nine’ or ‘the centre-forward’. Small things bothered him. Headline writers frequently aired the phrase: ‘The Son Also Rises’. Brian thought it was being used to the point of meaninglessness. He once asked in a bad temper: ‘It’s the same old crap. Isn’t there any imagination in newspaper offices?’