It was half a century last week since Brian Clough took over at Nottingham Forest. Was there ever a manager in the history of the game who had a more dramatic effect in his first five years of being in charge?
Promotion, a league title at the first time of asking, two League Cups, two European Cups and a Super Cup and, as everyone in these parts will tell you, all done with five players from the team he took over languishing in the old Second Division. No oligarch or oil-state money for Clough, who did it the old-fashioned way, with brilliant recruitment and man-management.
The thing with Clough is that he has become so omnipresent in football folklore that you can sometimes get lost in the mythical place he has there. ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’ is a line from the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The line is often used as a way to describe the idea that legends can be just as important as facts.
Clough definitely inhabits this world now. There is a practical cottage industry in Clough stories. People on the after-dinner circuit know the way to get the rapt attention of any audience is to say, ‘And then I met Cloughie’. The hush that always descends is a testament to the man.
One of my favourites concerns Liverpool. Every great sporting era needs two protagonists who push one another to greater heights. Ali and Frazier. Borg and McEnroe. Coe and Ovett. Those rivalries become seared into our consciousness.
Why is that? Why do we as human beings become so engaged when two people, teams or even empires engage in an almighty struggle to win? There is something in our DNA in watching mighty warriors touch the gods in their quest to be the best.
Brian Clough declared Liverpool to be Nottingham Forest’s fiercest rivals early on at the club
Clough’s Forest side repeatedly went into battle against Bob Paisley’s Liverpool in major finals
Back in those very early days of Clough taking over at Forest there is a story they tell. Forest, struggling in the old Second Division, had just lost to city rivals Notts County. The next morning at training the new manager told the head-bowed players that if they want to sulk because they think County are their rivals then they can think again!
A few players looked at one another… does he mean Derby? The club were our rivals, he had taken them into the stratosphere and they were two-time title winners in the last few years.
No gentlemen, said the 40-year-old with eyes aflame with ambition. I need you to understand that for me our fiercest rivals are now Liverpool.
The players now looked at one another incredulously…
Is he serious? The team everyone agrees are now probably the best in Europe, maybe the world!
He answered for them… oh yes young men… ‘they’ are the team I am aiming to surpass, and if you don’t believe me there’s no point you even staying at Nottingham Forest Football Club. Now go and get some balls and split up into two teams.
Clough was as good as his word as he took Forest into the First Division in 1977. They were favourites to go down, would you believe, a bit like this season, yet ended up winning it.
Now, no-one on the banks of the Trent thinks Forest will win the title this season, but good recruitment has seen them avoiding a relegation battle at least. The ambition of the owner is a big part of that. Clough had an elected committee to deal with, which he famously did at the end of that season when instead of turning up at the annual post-season meeting in person, he simply sent a Polaroid of the two cups he had won. Enough said and point made.
Clough, pictured with captain Kenny Burns, after Forest’s League Cup final win over Liverpool in 1978
I Believe in Miracles charted Forest’s rise under Clough to English and European champions
But what people also forget is Clough’s three signings when he took Forest up. The best goalkeeper in the world, Peter Shilton, the quite brilliant little Scottish midfielder Archie Gemmell and a Glaswegian striker from Birmingham City called Kenny Burns, who Clough and Peter Taylor decided they would turn into a world-class centre back. Not a bad bit of recruitment eh? As good as this side was, with it all being built around Forest’s greatest ever player John Robertson, a short, stocky winger who could twist your defence inside out and land the ball from the corners on to a sixpence, the problem was Liverpool Football Club.
Let’s talk a little about how great they were. Indeed, plenty say it their greatest ever team and there’s a few of them to pick from. They had gone seamlessly from the game’s other great personality manager, Bill Shankly, to his quieter, yet in some ways more effective assistant Bob Paisley.
Paisley turned Liverpool into world sport’s greatest winning machine. Indeed, the now famous banner hung on the Kop put it beautifully. ‘Here we go gathering cups in May’. And boy did they do that and some.
For a kid like me growing up in south Wales, we could name both those teams as they locked horns like two giant Texan bulls.
Clemence, the Kennedys, King Kenny, McDermott, Hughes, Thompson. Lads would shout in the school yard, ‘we’re Liverpool!’. Immediately others would answer. Shilton, Anderson, Larry and Kenny, Woodcock, Birtles and Robbo. ‘We’re Forest!’. We knew their names. Still do. There were songs in the charts about them.
They constantly seemed to be in finals, both in some kind of eternal 15-round boxing-like battle, landing haymakers, but ultimately Forest seeming to win. It drove Liverpool and their fans mad. I can remember after I did the film I Believe in Miracles a Scouser coming up to me in Sorrento in Italy.
‘I loved your film lad and it reminded me how frustrated we got! Our greatest ever team and we just couldn’t get a hold of these b******s who came from nowhere!’
We both laughed because it was so strange that the biggest rivals in Europe in the late 70s were barely two hours away by car and yet they won all five of the European Cups between 1977 and 1981. Go on, read that back and imagine that now? Two clubs literally swapping the greatest prize in domestic football for almost half a decade.
Forest ultimately seemed to win when they met in finals, which drove Liverpool fans mad
The club famously beat Liverpool 2-0 at home on route to winning the European Cup in 1979
That is how good they were. That is how intense it was. They even played one another in a European Cup game. It is easily Forest’s most famous home win, beating the double champions 2-0 on a night when millions watched on ITV in the days when you hardly ever had football on television.
Young Garry Birtles scored his first ever goal and then Colin Barrett smashed the second to give him mythical status among Forest fans to this day. They still sing a song about him beating the Scousers, almost 50 years later.
Talking of which, the Kop also still sings a song. It is about their fiercest rivals. It involves Everton and Manchester United, of course, but the song actually starts about a team they never even played for over 20 years.
The younger generation, who had grown up with Sky Sports and Liverpool v United being the game of the season, must have wondered what they were singing about?
Set to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory, it starts ‘We hate Nottingham Forest’ and Liverpool fans of a certain generation bellow it out with a nostalgic smile as they remember one of the great rivalries in football history.
Indeed, when they finally met again in the FA Cup a few years back, Liverpool TV did a wonderful piece to educate their younger fanbase about how, in a land and time long ago, ‘this’ was the rivalry.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s modern day Forest side have emerged as Liverpool’s challengers
Forest host Liverpool on Tuesday and will hope to close the gap in the Premier League table
I love the fact it all began on a miserable morning after a defeat to Notts County and with the dreams of one man to take his new team to the very top.
He knew he had to set his team and club heights as high as they are possible to go and that was to get after the mighty Liverpool.
There can be no greater compliment and that is what Forest’s players have to try and do again on Tuesday.
I Believe in Miracles is available to watch on Sky Store, Apple TV and Amazon Prime
