Roy Keane has vividly described in his autobiography the circumstances of debut for Nottingham Forest in Anfield in August 1990. The morning of the game he was told he would be travelling with the squad. Assuming that he was just tagging along for the experience, Keane was driven to the game by assistant manager Ronnie Fenton with Cloughie sitting in the front. At no stage during the journey did Clough mention that Keane would be starting in midfield.
When they gathered in the dressing room, Keane, feeling himself a spare tool, decided to look eager and make himself useful by laying out the jerseys.
Clough: Irishman, what are you doing?
Keane: Helping with the jerseys.
Clough: Well, grab a no. 6 jersey, you're playing.
We spoke to the Guardian Chief Football Writer Daniel Taylor about his book 'I Believe in Miracles', which accompanies the recently released film of the same name. Together, they chronicle Nottingham Forest's astounding rise from Second Division also-rans to two times European champions between 1976 and 1981.
We briefly discussed the latter part of Clough's spell at Nottingham Forest.
A Forest supporter, Taylor was standing in the away end in Anfield that night in 1990. There was bemusement as to the identity of the player in the no.6 jersey.
I can remember being at Roy Keane's debut actually which was at Anfield. And genuinely, no one in the away end knew his name. He'd basically been signed that day, put straight into the team and I remember everyone in the away end being perplexed about who this lad was. And then he went out there and played absolutely brilliantly.
We didn't have him for very long and he played in the relegation year but you could see he was a great player and obviously Blackburn and Manchester United were after him for a long time. But that again, it was a different era, but it shows Clough's touch for finding these people because I think he was £43,000 from Cobh Ramblers.
I think there'd been one paragraph (about Keane's signing) in the Nottingham Evening Post in the final edition and unless you were in the city centre of Nottingham picking up that edition, it only came out for a couple of hours, you'd never have realised who he was.
Listen to our discussion below:
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