Brian Clough's playing career - and his incredible record of 266 goals in 293 league appearances - came to an end on Boxing Day, 1962, when he suffered a horrendous knee injury on a frozen pitch. The rest is football legend: his managerial career is one of the greatest in English football. But Clough didn't spring out of nowhere. He grew up in Middlesbrough, a rough, tough town of shipyards and steelworks, a bright lad who was earning little more than GBP7 a week at a giant chemical works when he married a local girl one Saturday lunchtime before scoring against Leyton Orient in the afternoon. By the age of 24 he was captain of the Middlesbrough first team, already enjoying a close relationship with his guru Peter Taylor, the reserve-team goalkeeper, but enduring the suspicion of his older teammates who disliked his arrogance and his refusal to participate in the common practice of match fixing.
Based on considerable original research, including the frank testimony of Clough's surviving teammates, many of whom have not spoken before, "Young Clough" is a portrait of an era and a place long gone (industrial England), but also of one of the greatest figures of the game in his hugely formative years.
- ISBN10 0670919306
- ISBN13 9780670919307
- Publish Date 29 September 2011
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Viking
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 288
- Language English