Cloughie: Walking on Water. Brian Clough with John Sadler

This book dates from 2002, and the last chapter is largely devoted to the state of English football at that date. The sports-obsessed have much longer memories than that, and anyone wanting to know how the (nearly) current scene was viewed by the greatest genius, I'm in no doubt at all, who ever managed an English club can read all about it here. Clough was often wrong, and even he knew that, but much oftener right. Where his crystal ball deceived him in 2002 was in the belief that Alec Ferguson was over the hill. Ferguson has just won the league title again with Manchester United in 2007. It is a terrific achievement and a terrific career, and it's not over yet. To say the least of it, not everyone could have done what Ferguson has, even with Manchester United. What I don't believe Ferguson or any man could have equalled was what Clough achieved with two obscure and unfashionable clubs. I remember nothing about Clough's career as a player, because that was with minor sides and it was before the blanket TV coverage that we have today. Cloughie himself gives us no opportunity to forget what a great goal-scorer he was before a knee injury brought his playing days to an abrupt end. He went into management because he had bills to pay and a family to support, and he discovered that he had another talent too - he could teach. To put it mildly, he could communicate. To put it even more mildly, he didn't miss and hit the wall with his more acerbic opinions. That was what I used to love about him but, understandably, it didn't endear him to many. He was the glaringly obvious choice for manager of the England team, but governing bodies in sport tend to be side-issue specialists and of course greatly persuaded of their own importance, and they sensed (it would have been impossible not to) that Clough's estimate of that was well short of theirs. In case you didn't know that Clough was a conceited bigmouth he tells us that himself. He had any amount to be conceited about, and he knows that too. He plays the standard game of disparaging what he calls his `brains', and he was certainly not intellectually inclined. What he had was clear insight - what was blindingly obvious to him would never have been clear to many others in nine lifetimes, and any modern manager or coach wanting or needing to know some home truths could never complain about lack of clarity in Clough's account. Even he wasn't born knowing it. In his playing days it was all about scoring goals, but he was ahead of the others in appreciating that even if the forwards play like world-beaters a defence that plays like panel-beaters and lets in a goal for every goal scored will undo whatever the forwards achieve. He is as ruthless in describing his own downfall as he ever was in showing up anyone else's shortcomings. It was drink that nearly killed him, and he leads off with that story. If there is a touch of reticence, even from Clough, it shows in the way he can hardly bear to describe how hi