The late Brian CLOUGH is one of the managerial legends in English and European football. He conquered England and Europe with relatively small unheralded sides. This autobiography gives us glimpses into how he did it. An excerpt here:
"...There was the small matter of 270,000 pounds for Peter Shilton (goalkeeper) from Stoke. We were 'mad' in many people's eyes to spend a record fee on him...History now tells us that Shilton was worth twice the price. We were not mad at all; we were magic...
"...there was a familiar, tried and trusted formula - a goalkeeper, two centrehalves in this instance, and a centre forward. There they are. There's the framework, the backbone, those are the key components in the skeleton of any side"
I love the succinct tribute of Sir Alex Ferguson to CLOUGHIE here: "To win back-to-back European Cups with Nottingham forest has to go down as one of the finest managerial achievements of all time"
- Henry Ozogula
This book reminds one of the old days, when football was largely intermittent, just some snippets here and there to be seen on abridged sports programmes on tv. Certainly live games were a rarity then. The mind boggles when one sees the extraordinary, gratuitous coverage of nowadays that goes on and on these days, 24 hours a day on many channels! Yet the game is simple, and has always had its legends, as this book shows. We might not have seen the likes of John Robertson or Trevor Francis in action live ad nauseam - but we still salute them all
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