I met John Robertson during the time he and Martin O’God and Steve Walford were in charge at City, and he told me how much he and O’Neill had learned from Clough. One wonderful cameo, when we came back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with Chelsea (player managed by Ruud Gullitt. Robbo told me t hat all O’Neill did was walk into the dressing room at half time, look at the players, wait for 15 seconds and say “You lot spend too much time reading the papers. Eleven of them, eleven of you. No more.” He then paused, turned to Robertson and said “Tell them.” and walked out. Brilliant.

You’re welcome here. Email me.

Sorry, but criticism of The Damned United is absolute rubbish. David Pearce’s book is a fantastic portrait of a flawed genius. It doesn’t touch on his Forest years, but it shows how he came to be what he was to you lot. You can see in Martin O’Neill and John Robertson all of his and Peter Taylor’s skills in picking average players and polishing them into world beaters. I was there in the 70s, and The Damned United brings it all back – including the lying, cheating, bastards who played under Revie.

Read it.

David Peace made it clear that he was going to limit his research because he wanted to tell a story about a moment of crisis (for Leeds) – I can understand why people close to Cloughie would be upset by the book, and that’s another matter.

Perhaps you take the view that “I won’t read a really good book because it has upset someone who doesn’t deserve to be upset” – and that’s a rational response. But I don’t think that if anyone who reads this blog reads the book, that Mrs C, Nigel or Simon will be any less upset by it.