Clough and Walker

The life stories of Nottingham Forest's most successful and longest-serving managers and the remarkable impact they made on the club.

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21 March 1935 was an important day in the history of Nottingham Forest Football Club. It was the date that one Brian Howard Clough was born. Following a prolific goalscoring career with Middlesbrough and Sunderland, Clough retired from playing to manage Hartlepool United. Eleven years later he was appointed manager at the City Ground and the rest, as they say, is history.

In April of the same year as Clough's birth, Billy Walker – ex- Aston Villa legend – won his first piece of silverware as a manager: the FA Cup with Sheffield Wednesday. Four years later he took over the reins at Forest and stayed for another twenty-one years before retiring, making him the club’s longest-serving manager.

For the first time, Forest’s club historian Don Wright examines the respective careers of Walker and Clough, noting the striking similarities and revealing the differences in their approaches to the game of football and to life itself. This is the story of Nottingham Forest’s most successful and longest-serving managers and the remarkable impact they made on the club.