This is super
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Do you like flowers, son?, 'cause I love flowers, son.
Got a garden, son, and I love flowers, son.
Thank you, son.
Do you like flowers, son?, 'cause I love flowers, son.
Got a garden, son, and I love flowers, son.
Thank you, son.
There was a great interview by Danile Taylor with Gary Birtles and another of the Forst team of the 80s about their Uefa Cup(could have been Cup Winners Cup) semi final against Anderlecht where Anderlecht had bribed the referee and Forest got rode bare back. Cloughie walked to the ref at the end of the game and called him a cheat and knew full well that he had been bought off but never dwelt on it and never mentioned it in public. Just got on with it. A class act, you could imagine how much milage a cunt like Ferguson would have got out of similar circumstances
Anderlecht were found guilty of bribing the ref a few years later and banned from Europe for a season. Will try and dig out the article
[SIZE=6]Bribed in Brussels: How Nottingham Forest fell victim to fixing scandal[/SIZE]
When Anderlecht paid Emilio Guruceta Muro ÂŁ18,000 to fix the result of their Uefa Cup semi-final second leg in 1984, Brian Cloughâs side became embroiled in a match-fixing controversy. Almost 30 years later, the effects are still being felt by those involved on the night
It is approaching 30 years ago now, but Paul Hart can still remember Brian Cloughâs demeanour in the dressing room at [U]Anderlecht[/U][/URL] on the night [URL=âhttp://www.theguardian.com/football/nottinghamforestâ][U]Nottingham Forest[/U] found themselves up against 12 men. The most charismatic and outspoken manager of his, or possibly any, generation once told a room of Italian reporters he would talk to âno cheating bastardsâ after his Derby County side lost to Juventus in the semi-final of the European Cup. Now he just sat in a corner and barely said a word. âJust really quiet,â Hart recalls. âUnusually quiet.â
At Forest they always suspected their 3-0 defeat in the second leg of the Uefa Cup semi-final in April 1984 was fixed. The truth finally emerged in 1997 when the Belgian club admitted their former president, Constant Vanden Stock, had used a local gangster to pay the Spanish referee ÂŁ18,000. Anderlecht were banned for a year from Uefaâs competitions, which seems remarkably lenient in hindsight, but one of the great [U]match-fixing[/U] scandals of its time still remains in the small print of the sportâs history books.
âMaybe because we didnât make a great fuss,â Hart suggests. âOne of the things about Brian Cloughâs teams was that we were always taught never to complain to referees. So we just got on the plane afterwards and flew home. We had a game that weekend against Stoke City and we just got on with it.â Clough does not even mention it once in either of his autobiographies.
Yet the story of what happened that night in Brussels is a stark reminder that football has always been vulnerable to match-fixing. Others, plainly, will have got away with it.
Cloughâs team had travelled to Belgium with a 2-0 lead from the first leg. âWe battered themâ, as Hart puts it. Forest had already won three of their four away games in the competition, at PSV Eindhoven, Celtic and Vorwärts to reach that stage, as well as drawing against Sturm Graz in Austria. A third European final in six years was within reach.
Yet Clough was always uneasy about the appointment of Emilio Guruceta Muro as referee. The Spaniard was already getting a reputation after sending off two Italians and awarding Standard Liège a dubious penalty in a game against Napoli. Hart had his own concerns. âI remember saying to Kenny Swain I hope itâs not the same guy we had when I was playing for Leeds in a tournament in Spain a couple of years earlier. That referee had sent off two of our players for no reason. Then we were waiting in the tunnel and there he was â the same guy.â
A pattern of strange decisions was already taking shape when Enzo Scifo put Anderlecht ahead after 20 minutes. But Forest held out until the hour mark, when Muro ruled Swain had brought down Kenneth Brylle to give away a penalty. âKenny must have been three yards away,â Hart says. âIt was a blatant dive anyway. But I canât stress this enough, Kenny was a mile off him. It could easily have been offside as well.â
By that stage, the visitors were starting to fear the worst. Garry Birtles, coming back from injury, started on the bench with Clough. âHe twigged it,â Birtles said. âThose were his exact words. Before the match our dressing-room door was open. The refereeâs door was open and we could see Anderlecht officials going in an out.â
It was to get even worse. Erwin Vandenbergh scored Anderlechtâs third with two minutes left to put the home side ahead on aggregate for the first time. Then, in stoppage time, Forest won a corner. âI headed it as clean as a whistle,â Hart remembers. âThe ball flew past Ian Bowyer and into the net and that would have been us in the final. Their goalkeeper was already berating his defenders, and then the whistle went. Nobody had a clue why. I said to Ian: âWere you offside? Did you push someone?â He said: âDonât be silly.â But it was disallowed.â
Birtles takes up the story. âColin Walsh put over the corner and it was more or less a free header. There was no contact with a defender whatsoever. We were just looking at each other thinking: âWhat on earth is going on here?â It was embarrassing. Your natural thought is not that it was a bent referee, but we knew weâd been done.â
Up in the press box, they were just as bemused. John Wragg was covering the match as the Midlands correspondent for the Daily Express. âClough was particularly angry on the touchline, which was unusual. He was jumping up and down and it was obvious he knew something was going on. This was back in the days when everyone mixed and after the game all the players and officials were together in one big room. Cloughie came up to the various journalists, kissed each of us on the cheek and said: âEh, you know we were cheated, donât you?ââ
The BBCâs Pat Murphy was also at the game and later wrote in His Way: The Brian Clough Story, that he had feared a riot. âThe travelling army of Forest fans contained more than a few hotheads and at the end of match the atmosphere was poisonous.â At the final whistle, Clough tried to defuse the situation by rushing on to the pitch to shake the refereeâs hand. âHe no doubt wished he could shake his neck instead, but contented himself with a meaningful stare.â
The truth came to light only after two people were arrested for apparently blackmailing Anderlecht out of hundreds of thousands of pounds not to reveal the story, having secretly taped the conversations with Muro. For the losers, it was no surprise. âThe referee wouldnât even shake our hands,â Bowyer recalls. âCloughie came in and effectively told us that the referee was bent and we should just get out of there.â
Forest would have played Spurs in the final, a team that finished five places behind them, 13 points worse off, in the First Division. âI never won a medal as a player, so it was a sickener,â Hart says. âHow can you put a price on a European medal? You can take losing fairly but when you know you have been cheated itâs desperately unfair and wrong.â He and his team-mates tried to sue, taking their case to Charleroi, but it was âlost in the annals of Belgian lawâ. The footage of Hartâs disallowed goal has also mysteriously disappeared.
Muro died in a car crash in 1987, aged 45, taking his secrets to the grave. As for Anderlecht, a group of their supporters did visit Nottingham a few years back to make their own apology. Yet the club have clearly never felt it necessary to change the name of the Constant Vanden Stock stadium, with son Roger taking over as president. Birtles occasionally has to go there for his television work. âEvery time,â he says, âit sticks in my throat.â
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The second greatest British manager after Bob Paisley.
Clough was the GOAT not just of management but of mankind itself
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When he was sacked mid season by Derby the fans went mad at chairman. Next home game was banners everywhere demanded he be brought back. Lo and behold Cloughie sneaks into baseball ground and stands up in his seat taking the acclaim of the crowd just before kick off.
The best wum who ever lived
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One of the great interviewees in sports
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Johnny Giles told a story that clough didnât talk to Leeds players for a good while after he took overâŚbilly bremner asked him to have a meeting with players .clough shows up and points at Norman Hunter and says âyouâre a dirty bastardâ ,says same to Giles and then tells Eddie gray if he was a horse heâd have been out down 
One of the greatest human beings that ever walked this Earth 
Classic Clough
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Amazing man. Watch to the end.
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Only seeing this now.
Launches into Murdoch?
He peddled The Sunâs lies post Hillsborough at every chance he got.
And he was a massive homophobe. His treatment of Justin Fashanu was disgraceful.
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