Every Nottingham Forest supporter knows about Munich and Madrid. But the Nottingham Forest 1978 title win is arguably the more absurd achievement, and it is certainly the more unrepeatable one. In May 1977 Forest were a Second Division side who had scraped promotion in third place. Twelve months later they were champions of England — and no promoted club has done it since.
This is how Brian Clough and Peter Taylor turned a newly promoted team into the best side in the country in a single season.
Where Forest had come from
Clough took the Forest job in January 1975, at the lowest ebb of his managerial career, after the 44 days at Leeds United. He inherited a mid-table Second Division club with a small ground, smaller crowds and no obvious route upwards. Peter Taylor, his old partner from the Derby County years, joined him in the summer of 1976, and the pair set about assembling a squad on a budget that would today buy a squad number and not much else.
Promotion arrived in 1976/77, and it arrived narrowly: Forest went up in third place behind Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea. There was no fanfare. The consensus view was that a club of Forest’s size would spend the following season fighting relegation.
The signings that changed everything
What happened instead was one of the most effective pieces of squad-building English football has seen. Clough and Taylor did not rebuild the team; they added four or five players and moved the rest.
Kenny Burns arrived from Birmingham City in the summer of 1977 with a reputation as a combustible centre-forward and a lifestyle that had put other managers off entirely. Taylor watched him, backed him, and Clough moved him to centre-half. Burns was named Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year at the end of the season.
Peter Shilton came from Stoke City in September 1977 for £270,000 — a British record fee for a goalkeeper, and a sum that made no sense whatsoever for a promoted club. Forest conceded 24 league goals all season.
Archie Gemmill followed from Derby County that same month, with goalkeeper John Middleton moving the other way as part of the deal. Gemmill gave the midfield the relentless, needling quality Clough wanted.
They joined a spine that was already in place: Larry Lloyd, signed from Coventry City and rebuilt as Burns’s partner; Frank Clark, a free transfer from Newcastle United whom most clubs had written off; John McGovern, the captain who had followed Clough from Hartlepool to Derby to Leeds to Nottingham; Viv Anderson at right-back; Ian Bowyer; Martin O’Neill; and, out on the left touchline, John Robertson — the player Clough described as having been transformed from a scruff into an artist.
Up front, Peter Withe did the leading and Tony Woodcock did the running. Woodcock was voted PFA Young Player of the Year in 1978.
Nottingham Forest 1978 title: the final numbers
Forest won the First Division with 64 points from 42 games — and this was under two points for a win, so the total is worth reading twice. They finished seven points clear of Liverpool, the reigning European champions. They lost three league games all season.
- Played: 42
- Won: 25 — Drawn: 14 — Lost: 3
- Goals for: 69 — Goals against: 24
- Points: 64, seven clear of Liverpool
The title was mathematically secured on 22 April 1978 with a goalless draw away at Coventry City — a fittingly undramatic ending for a side whose defining quality was that it simply did not lose.
What makes the record more remarkable is how few players Clough used. There was no rotation, no rest weeks and no sports science department. A handful of men played virtually every minute of a title-winning season and then went straight into the European Cup.
The League Cup, and an 18-year-old goalkeeper
Forest won a second trophy that season. They reached the League Cup final and drew 0-0 with Liverpool at Wembley on 18 March 1978, then won the replay at Old Trafford 1-0 four days later through a John Robertson penalty.
The detail everyone remembers is the goalkeeper. Shilton was cup-tied, having played in the competition for Stoke, so Clough handed both the final and the replay to 18-year-old Chris Woods, who kept Liverpool out across 210 minutes of football. It was the first of four League Cups Forest would win under Clough.
Why it has never been done again
Forest were the first promoted club to win the English title since Ipswich Town in 1962, and they remain the last. In the Premier League era the gap between the divisions has widened to the point where a newly promoted side finishing in the top half is treated as a triumph. The idea of one winning the thing outright now belongs to fiction.
The 1978 team also launched everything that followed. The unbeaten league run that began that November stretched to 42 games and stood as an English record for decades. Qualification for the European Cup produced the back-to-back triumphs of 1979 and 1980 that still define the club internationally. And Viv Anderson, the right-back in that title side, became the first Black player to represent England at senior level in November 1978.
There is a reasonable argument that the league championship was the hardest of the lot. The European Cup was won over nine ties by an established team; the First Division was won over 42 games by a group who, nine months earlier, had been playing Blackpool and Oldham Athletic.
The 1977/78 side, remembered
The regulars of that season — Shilton; Anderson, Lloyd, Burns, Clark; McGovern, Gemmill, Bowyer, O’Neill, Robertson; Withe and Woodcock — are the reason so many names on our all-time Forest XI come from a three-year window in the late 1970s. Several of them also sit high on the club’s all-time appearance list.
Nearly half a century on, the 1978 championship remains the only league title in Nottingham Forest’s history. It is the top line of the club’s honours list and the foundation of everything told in the full Brian Clough story.
Historical season records and full league tables are published by the English Football League, with club heritage information available on the official Nottingham Forest website.
