Every Nottingham Forest supporter of a certain age can tell you where the two European Cups came from. Fewer people outside the city realise that the same dressing room produced one of the most significant footballers England has ever picked. Viv Anderson Nottingham Forest is a story about a local lad who walked into Brian Clough’s side as a teenager, won everything there was to win in the space of three seasons, and then changed the look of the England national team for good.
Who is Viv Anderson?
Vivian Alexander Anderson was born in Nottingham on 29 August 1956, the son of parents who had come to the city from Jamaica. He was a Forest boy in the most literal sense — raised in the city, taken on by the club as an apprentice, and given his first-team debut in 1974, before Brian Clough had even arrived at the City Ground.
Tall, quick and almost absurdly long in the leg, Anderson was a right-back built for a style of football that did not really exist yet. He defended by getting there first rather than by wrestling, and he attacked the touchline in a way that full-backs of the mid-1970s largely did not. Clough, who took over in January 1975, worked out very quickly that the teenager already at the club was better than anything he could buy.
Across a decade in the first team Anderson made more than 320 appearances for Forest. For a defender in that era it is a remarkable run of availability, and it covered every single trophy the club won in its greatest period.
The Viv Anderson Nottingham Forest years: Clough’s right-back in the best team in Europe
The sequence still reads like a misprint. Forest were promoted from the Second Division in 1977. They won the First Division title at the first attempt in 1977/78, the season told in full in our account of how Clough’s promoted side won the league. They won the League Cup that same season and retained it the next. And then they won the European Cup in 1979 and again in 1980.
Anderson was there for all of it. He was in the side through the 42-game unbeaten league run that made Forest the most difficult team in the country to beat. He started the 1979 final in Munich, when Trevor Francis headed the goal that beat Malmo. He started the 1980 final in Madrid, when John Robertson struck the only goal against Hamburg. Two finals, two clean sheets, two medals — the full story of which is set out in our piece on the 1979 and 1980 European Cups.
What made that back line work was its balance. Peter Shilton behind them, Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd in the middle, Frank Clark and then Anderson on the flanks, with John McGovern screening in front. Forest conceded almost nothing, and Anderson’s recovery pace was a large part of why Clough could push his side so high up the pitch without being punished.
29 November 1978: the night everything changed
Anderson’s place in the wider history of English football was secured on a Wednesday night at Wembley. On 29 November 1978, in a friendly against Czechoslovakia, he became the first Black player to start a full senior international for England.
It is worth pausing on what that meant in 1978. Black players were still a small minority in the English game, the terraces of the period were frequently and openly hostile, and the idea that the national team might look like the country it represented was, for many, a genuinely contested proposition. Anderson did not campaign for the shirt; he simply became too good to leave out, in the best team in Europe, and the selectors ran out of reasons.
He went on to win 30 caps across spells at three clubs. More importantly, he opened a door. Every Black player who has pulled on an England shirt since — and there have been hundreds — did so through a gap that Anderson made first. He was later appointed MBE for services to football and inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame.
Arsenal, Manchester United and life after Forest
Anderson left the City Ground in 1984, joining Arsenal after a decade of service. Three years later he made another piece of history without particularly meaning to: in July 1987 he became the first player signed by Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, arriving at Old Trafford for a fee reported at the time as around £250,000.
He later played for Sheffield Wednesday, took his first job in management as player-manager of Barnsley in 1993, and then spent several years as Bryan Robson’s assistant at Middlesbrough. Since retiring from coaching he has remained a familiar and unfailingly generous presence around the game, and around Nottingham in particular.
Where Anderson sits in Forest’s history
Forest’s great side is usually remembered through its most quotable figures — Clough himself, Shilton’s presence, Robertson’s left foot, Francis and the million-pound fee. Anderson is the one who tends to get listed rather than described, which does him a disservice. He is in most credible versions of our all-time Forest XI, he features high on the list of most appearances in Forest history, and he is the only member of that team whose career changed something outside football.
There is a neat symmetry in the fact that the current Reds are built on attacking wing-backs. Oliver Glasner has made the wide areas the engine of his Forest side, with Daniel Munoz and Neco Williams asked to cover the whole flank in a way that would have looked outlandish to most managers in 1978. It would not have looked outlandish to Viv Anderson. He was doing it, at the City Ground, half a century ago.
England appearance records are held by England Football, European Cup final records by UEFA, and club history on the official Nottingham Forest website.
