UK News 21-09-2004 Greatest Coach England Never Had who: Brian Clough what: Dies, aged 69 where: DERBY when: Yesterday snippet: "English football was in mourning last night following the death of Brian Clough," says The Guardian, "though nowhere was the sense of loss felt as acutely as in the east Midlands. From the depths of the old Second Division, Clough propelled Derby County to national prominence, then Nottingham Forest to inconceivable European success during a managerial career which spanned four decades." Cloughie, who took Forest from obscurity in 1975 to win consecutive European Cups in 1979 and 1980, died of stomach cancer yesterday, aged 69. The condition, which he had kept a secret, was diagnosed shortly after he received a successful liver transplant 21 months ago, says The Mirror. "Once, before a television interview, I told him I thought he was too drunk to go on," says Michael Parkinson in The Telegraph. "`What are you frightened of?` he said. `That you`ll make a spectacle of yourself,` I said. `But I`ve done that all my life,` he said." "You can talk about him for hours in terms of stories you`ve got," Stuart Pearce, who skippered Forest in Clough`s declining years, tells the BBC, "but the bottom line is just go and have a look in the trophy cabinet he brought to different clubs around the country. That says it all, basically." [... more]

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