Regarding Clough’s wandering eye for other positions, it’s well established that (particularly by author Duncan Hamilton) that much of the proposed new jobs such as the Wales job in particular and Scotland team boss jobs were a wedge to lever more money out of the Forest board towards his salary!

Great manager and an interesting discussion.

Stu

A book:
ABC, Ajax, Barcelona, Cruyff

Song: I can’t even quote words properly, but Monchengladbach fans had a great set of verses about lederhosen when I saw them play Bayern.

I am with Metatone, in that one of the resonances I felt reading this was with Rugby League. Another part of the mythology is, it seems to me, entirely shaped by class reasoning: that the sports writers all went to “good” schools, and so learnt to play and thus value union not league; while the voice of league, and, let it not be forgotten, “It’s a Knockout”, Eddie Waring simply perpetuated the stereotype of primitive northern clowns, who were then further condemned because they were plasterers and the like in their day jobs.

2) Incidental thought about professionalism, your critique of the emphasis on “class reasoning” reminds me that the most professional of sports, Rugby League (surely born out of the need to pay players? or so the mythology says) was, in my youth actually filled with bricklayers, steelworkers and plasterers, who made their living as tradesmen and moved jobs when they moved clubs. There were payments (as befitting the fact that it was the late 20th century) but there were not “professional sportspeople” in the mould of footballers or top tennis players [just watched Wimbledon!] now. They had whole separate working lives.

[Tennis players comes to mind also because, like footballers at the top level, tennis is now a sport where all the top talents entered "the system of the game" at about puberty. How different that is to players who worked another job and also how different that makes our relationship with the sport? Knowing that by the age we are adults (18? or so) our chance to be involved has definitively passed.]

3) I’d love to see your thoughts on the Women’s game. Both the history, you have a better grasp of the commercial side in the early times than many, but also some thread to present times. I was, for my sins, involved in the late 90s in attempts to push the FA into realising some of the potential of women’s football. Alas, we failed to change the institutional inertia. Still, given the massive popularity at some previous historical moments, perhaps there’s an interesting blog to be written?