Brian Clough is the reason Nottingham Forest are a name known well beyond Nottingham. In 18 years at the City Ground he took a middling Second Division side and turned it into champions of England and, twice, champions of Europe — a run of success no club of Forest’s size has come close to repeating. This is the full story of the Reds’ greatest era.
Brian Clough arrives at Nottingham Forest
Clough was appointed Forest manager on 6 January 1975. He was 39, already a champion of England with Derby County, and freshly humiliated by a 44-day spell at Leeds United that had ended in the sack. Forest were 13th in the Second Division and going nowhere in particular. It was, on paper, a step down for a manager whose reputation had been built on winning.
The first 18 months were unremarkable. What changed everything was the arrival of Peter Taylor in the summer of 1976. Taylor, Clough’s assistant at Hartlepool and Derby, had been managing Brighton and was persuaded back. The partnership was the engine of everything that followed: Clough the front man and motivator, Taylor the judge of a player. Neither was as good apart as they were together, and both said so.
Promotion, then the title at the first attempt
Forest went up in 1976/77, finishing third in the Second Division and squeezing into the final promotion place. Nobody expected much of them in the top flight. The squad had been assembled cheaply, largely from other clubs’ discards — Kenny Burns converted from a wayward forward into a centre-half, Peter Shilton signed in goal, Larry Lloyd rescued from the lower leagues, John Robertson transformed from a fringe player into the best left winger in the country.
What happened next remains one of the great stories in English football. In 1977/78, their first season back in the First Division, Forest won the league title by seven points from Liverpool. They also won the League Cup, beating Liverpool 1-0 in a replay at Old Trafford. A club that had been mid-table in the second tier two years earlier were champions of England.
Along the way they built a record that stood for a quarter of a century: 42 First Division matches unbeaten, from November 1977 to December 1978. It was only surpassed by Arsenal’s Invincibles in 2004.
The European Cups: 1979 and 1980
Winning the league earned Forest a place in the European Cup. They were drawn against Liverpool, the holders, in the first round — and knocked them out. In February 1979, mid-campaign, Clough and Taylor signed Trevor Francis from Birmingham City for a fee that made him Britain’s first £1m footballer.
Francis was cup-tied for the earlier rounds. He was not cup-tied for the final. In Munich on 30 May 1979, he arrived at the far post to head in John Robertson’s cross and beat Malmö 1-0. Forest were European champions in their first attempt at the competition.
They did it again a year later. In Madrid on 28 May 1980, Robertson scored the only goal against a Hamburg side built around Kevin Keegan. Two European Cups in two seasons, from a club that had been in the Second Division four years before. Forest also won the European Super Cup in 1979 and a second League Cup in the same year, beating Southampton 3-2 in the final. You can read the full account of how the Reds won the European Cup twice in our dedicated guide, and the complete list of Forest honours here. Only a handful of English clubs have ever lifted the trophy, as UEFA’s competition history records.
The long second act
Nothing could match that, and Clough never pretended otherwise. Taylor retired in 1982 and the pair fell out badly over the transfer of John Robertson to Derby; they never properly reconciled before Taylor’s death in 1990. Clough carried on alone for another 11 years.
The later Forest sides were not European champions, but they were good, and they were watchable. Built around Stuart Pearce, Des Walker, Nigel Clough and later Roy Keane, they won back-to-back League Cups in 1989 and 1990, plus the Full Members’ Cup in 1989 and the Zenith Data Systems Cup in 1992. The one prize that always escaped him was the FA Cup: Forest reached the final in 1991 and lost 2-1 to Tottenham after extra time.
How it ended
The final season was a sad one. Forest were relegated in 1992/93, the inaugural Premier League campaign, and Clough retired in May 1993 after 18 years in charge. He had been unwell, and his drinking had become an open subject. The City Ground crowd sang his name anyway.
He died on 20 September 2004, aged 69. His self-assessment — “I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business, but I was in the top one” — is quoted so often it has become shorthand for the man: funny, immodest, and not actually wrong.
What Clough left behind
The traces are everywhere. A stand at the City Ground carries his name, a statue of him stands in Nottingham’s Old Market Square, and the A52 between Nottingham and Derby is the Brian Clough Way. The League Cup’s modern-day trophy pedigree, the two stars, the songs on the Trent End — all of it runs back to him. Our guide to the City Ground covers the stands and their history in full.
More than that, he left a standard. Every Forest manager since has been measured against a man who won two European Cups with a team assembled from bargains and rejects, and every Forest supporter knows it. Details of the club’s honours and history are maintained on the official Nottingham Forest website.
It is an impossible act to follow. It is also, for the Tricky Trees, the best possible reason to keep turning up.
