The rows, the shocks and the genius of Brian Clough
Forty years on, Martin O’Neill, Viv Anderson and Frank Clark recall the birth of a miracle
MARTIN O’NEILL’S eyes light up. He might even have licked his lips had he not been in such a public setting at Lansdowne Road. The mention of egg and chips sandwiches have a certain effect on the Republic of Ireland manager.
Thoughts of the greasy delicacy transport him back four decades to Nottingham. ‘McKay’s,’ O’Neill beams, before carefully calling out each letter to make sure there is no mistake with spelling.
It was there, in that café just around the corner from Forest’s training ground, that the bonds of Brian Clough’s history-making side were formed. The back-to-back European Cup successes of 1979 and ’80 which inspired a book and film by the same name, ‘I Believe in Miracles’, were only made possible by the improbable First Division title win in 1978.
Forty years on, the story is still captivating. Just how did a team go from third in the old Second Division to champions of England and twice conquer Europe in successive seasons? They are triumphs which belong to a different age, but should never be forgotten.
Clough took charge in 1975 with his own reputation tarnised by that infamous 44-day spell in charge of Leeds United, and earned promotion to the top flight two seasons later before completing the most remarkable rise to the top of the English game by dethroning Bob Paisley’s Liverpool.
And he did so with a ramshackle squad he just happened to fill full of character, class and ability – but one which only he and assistant Peter Taylor truly believed in. ‘That’s what made them football geniuses,’ right back Viv Anderson recalls. ‘They saw things other people just couldn’t.’
Along the way there was blood, sweat and tears. And those luscious egg and chips sandwiches from McKay’s. ‘We always went on a Friday after training,’ Anderson explains. ‘Training would finish and straight away it would be “right, whose turn is it to get the sandwiches, get them in”.
‘It was players only, if the manager or Peter came in we’d get up and leave, but they knew not to bother us there. For an hour or so nothing was off limits. When it was time for the kids to be picked up, those who had to would head off, sometimes the rest of us would go to a wine bar, but we were always together.’
Naturally, then, it was on a plane to Majorca for an end-of-season trip in ’77 that the Forest squad found out they secured promotion to the First Division.
‘Martin O’Neill had the occasional lapse into insecurity even during that week of celebrations by the hotel pool in Cala Millor, drinking beer out of plastic cups and listen- ing to his Jethro Tull tape,’ Daniel Taylor wrote in his book about the period.
‘We knew that Clough and Taylor would make some changes,’ O’Neill admits. ‘We were hoping – myself, Tony Woodcock, John Robertson, Ian Bowyer and Viv – that we would be part of it going forward.’
They were, but expectations were modest ahead of the new season. ‘Well, we were certainly confident that we wouldn’t be relegated,’ laughs defender Frank Clark, who at 33 was the oldest player in the Forest squad, having played over 400 times for Newcastle before arriving in Nottingham.
The early stages of that opening game of the campaign away to Everton, with the Goodison Park crowd taunting them with chants of ‘lambs to the slaughter’, left Forest’s players shook. ‘I’ll never forget it,’ O’Neill continues. ‘We never got a breather for the first 25 minutes. We all thought the same thing “this is too much, we’ll never survive here”.’
But they did, Forest won the game 3-1 with the third scored by O’Neill, and rather than congratulate them on a job well done, Clough left the post-match talk to the doyen of Liverpool, Bill Shankly, who insisted Forest were capable of winning the league.
It took a few months for them to believe him – a 4-0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford a week before Christmas being the turning point – during which time they set the First Division alight and began to realise the special qualities of the group. However, a few kinks still needed to be ironed out.
After a 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in their fourth game, Clough took goalkeeper Peter Shilton from Stoke City to the City Ground for a record £250,000, and also added Archie Gemmill. But it was the signing of Kenny Burns which summed up the unique nature of what was happening.
Despite scoring 20 goals in the top flight the previous season (the same as Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa most recently), the Scottish striker – with a reputation for gambling, fighting and drinking – was an outcast at Birmingham City.
Taylor was keen, Clough vehemently opposed, but the former convinced the manager of Burns’ potential. The 23-year-old arrived at the club where he was promptly told he would play at centre back rather than up front.
‘Kenny was mad, absolutely mad,’ Nottingham boy Anderson, who became the first black player to play for England while at his local club, chuckles. ‘There is just no other way to describe him. I lived down the road from him and he would bring me to work every morning because I couldn’t drive. He would drop off his child at the creche and get his stopwatch out. Then, “zooooom”, we were gone. He would race through the streets and once we arrived for training he’d pull the stopwatch out to see how he compared to his previous times.’
Burns proved a revelation on and off the pitch and is a prime example of Clough and Taylor being able to scratch beneath the surface to refine a tainted gem. ‘It was good cop, bad cop,’ Anderson, who was awarded an MBE and is now chief executive of PlayOn which helps former professional footballers, says of their dynamic. ‘Peter would come up to you all friendly like, “so what do you like? A bird, a bet or a drink”. You’d tell him, “yeah, I don’t mind a bet”, and a month later Brian would be telling you to stop betting.’
As the season progressed, confidence soared. ‘Things just snowballed for us,’ Clark, who went on to replace Clough as Forest manager in 1993, remembers. ‘We won the League Cup and the celebrations from Brian were very low key. We barely saw the trophy, Brian took it home with him and put it up on his mantelpiece while he had his fish and chips in the front room. It was his way of refocusing our minds.’
Clough had already done so with O’Neill, who was 25 and in the prime of his career on the right wing as Forest battled Liverpool
We didn’t see the trophy, Clough took it home to put on his mantelpiece
Martin had his point of view and there were plenty of rows with Brian
for the title. ‘Martin worked tremendously hard and perhaps he didn’t get the recognition he should have got for what he did for the team, or at least what he thought he should have got,’ Clark adds.
‘Martin always had his point of view, there were plenty of rows with Brian, they would face up and go head to head and Brian would have privately admired Martin’s strength of character.’
With O’Neill on the wing and Anderson supporting him at full back, their gripes about Clough focusing Forest’s attack down the left with John Robertson were not confined to Friday afternoons in McKay’s.
‘We would complain all the time that Robbo always had the ball,’ Anderson laughs. ‘But he was a magician and vital to how successful we were, even if we would get frostbite in some games.’
Robertson became O’Neill’s righthand man during most of his managerial career, so there is certainly no doubt about the mutual respect. ‘You can only go by what happened in your time,’ O’Neill adds. ‘If you’re a great player in one era, any advantages you might have got you would use them. John Robertson would be a great player now. He would be worth an absolute fortune because he would probably use some of the things available to him to get a little bit fitter.’
That was no issue for Forest, who finished seven points clear of Liverpool. The current crop face local rivals Derby County today – another of Clough’s old clubs – and they can only dream of the same glory. Slowly but surely, the squad that created history under Clough broke up.
‘The team didn’t stay together for a decade or go on and on, and with Brian there is always that interest,’ Anderson says. ‘I understand why people are still interested in it, there is a mystique about it all.’