Archie Gemmill was at Nottingham Forest for barely two years, and in that time he won a league title, played in one of the great unbeaten runs in English football, and scored the most famous goal any Forest player has ever scored for someone else. Then Brian Clough left him out of a European Cup final and he was gone.
It is a short Forest career and a strange one. It is also, for a certain generation of supporter, completely unforgettable. Here is the story of the little Scot who bridged Clough’s two great sides.
How Brian Clough signed Archie Gemmill twice
Gemmill was born in Paisley in March 1947 and came through at St Mirren before Preston North End brought him south. It was at Deepdale that Clough found him — and the way Clough got him is one of the most retold anecdotes in British football.
Gemmill, the story goes, was leaning towards Everton and told Clough he would sleep on it. Clough announced that in that case he would sleep at the Gemmills’ house, spent the night on the sofa, made breakfast in the morning and left with a signature. Whatever the embellishments, the deal was done: Gemmill joined Derby County in 1970.
He was a title winner there twice over — under Clough in 1971-72 and again under Dave Mackay in 1974-75, after Clough had walked out of the Baseball Ground. Five foot five, relentless, all short strides and sharp turns, he was the engine of the side rather than its ornament.
The move to the City Ground
By September 1977 Clough was at Forest, had just taken the club up, and wanted a midfielder who already knew exactly what he demanded. He went back for Gemmill, with goalkeeper John Middleton heading to Derby as part of the arrangement.
It looked, at the time, like a manager indulging a favourite. It was nothing of the sort. Gemmill walked into a promoted side and helped turn it into champions of England at the first attempt.
1977-78: champions, first time up
Forest’s 1977-78 title remains the most improbable thing the club has done in the league, and Gemmill was central to it. Clough and Peter Taylor had assembled a team with no obvious weakness and an absurdly settled spine — Peter Shilton behind, Kenny Burns and Larry Lloyd across the middle, John McGovern and Gemmill in front of them, John Robertson wide left.
Gemmill’s job in that side was the unglamorous one: win it back, move it on, never give it away. Robertson got the headlines and the assists. Gemmill got the ball to Robertson.
He was also part of the run that followed — 42 league games without defeat, a record that stood for more than two decades until Arsenal’s Invincibles finally beat it.
Mendoza, 1978: the goal
In between, in June 1978, came the goal. Scotland needed to beat the Netherlands by three at the World Cup in Mendoza to go through. Gemmill picked the ball up on the right of the area, went past one defender, then another, then clipped it over the goalkeeper for 3-1.
It was not enough — Johnny Rep scored almost immediately and Scotland went out — and that is precisely why it endures. A perfect goal in a doomed cause, later immortalised in Trainspotting and still the first thing most neutrals can tell you about Archie Gemmill. He won 43 caps for Scotland in all.
Munich, 1979: left out
The following spring, Forest reached the European Cup final in Munich. Gemmill did not start it. Clough went with Ian Bowyer in midfield, Trevor Francis scored the only goal against Malmo, and Forest became champions of Europe without one of the men who had got them there.
Gemmill has never pretended to have taken it well, and few supporters would expect him to. He left for Birmingham City that summer, later spent a spell in the United States with Jacksonville Tea Men, and eventually went back to Derby to finish his playing career.
What he left behind
Gemmill returned to the City Ground in coaching, working with Forest’s young players, and he and McGovern later shared the manager’s job at Rotherham United in the mid-1990s. His son Scot Gemmill came through the Forest academy and gave the club the best years of a long career in the 1990s — two Gemmills, one club, across three decades.
He does not always make the cut when supporters pick an all-time Forest XI, and that is understandable when the competition includes Robertson, Burns and Shilton. But the 1977-78 side does not function without him, and no Forest player before or since has scored a goal the whole world still watches.
Nearly fifty years on, Oliver Glasner is building something rather different at the City Ground. But the template Clough set — a settled spine, a midfielder who does the running so someone else can do the damage — has never really gone out of fashion.
