“This badge is bigger than any manager,” Sean Dyche said at his unveiling as Nottingham Forest’s head coach, wearing a training top with his initials, before correcting himself. “Well, there was one manager who was probably as big as the badge – we all know who that was.” Then came an impression of Brian Clough, a crack at that unique drawl. “‘Young ginger, well done,’” he said, reliving his three years as a trainee at the City Ground, the days he spent wandering down the Trent, with Del Boy, Clough’s labrador, whizzing past him and his manager’s voice invariably within earshot.
Dyche tells a story of how, as a youth player, he and a few others tended to Clough’s garden at his home in Quarndon. “We were on £28.50 a week and he paid you a tenner to do his garden. So we actually thought: ‘This is decent.’ He’d cook for you and make sure you were well looked after. It was quite enjoyable, not too much gardening.”
