Is there any other manager in the history of football with more brilliant stories told about them legendary East Midlands manager Brian Clough?

The former Derby and Nottingham Forest passed away in 2004 but the hilarious anecdotes continue to come thick and fast from former players, keeping footie fans entertained with tales of his unconventional, but bloody brilliant, management style.

So, in my humble opinion, these are my favourite five Brian Clough stories…and I think they’re all absolutely hilarious..

Thanks for the memories, Big ‘Ead

5. Dave Currie falls out of favour

Cloughie’s man-management was unrivaled back in the day, and boy, he could be brutal at times.

Stuart Pearce often shares this brilliant Brian Clough story from his Nottingham Forest days when making media appearances.

‘Psycho’ played under Cloughie for eight seasons at Forest, seven as his captain, so knows all about his unique ways so tells us this tale…

“We signed a fella called Dave Currie from Barnsley for £650,000 one summer and we were about three weeks into the pre-season, he said in a radio interview.

“Now, Dave had only been at the club for three weeks and we went to play at Derby in a friendly.

“We were sat in the Baseball Ground, and when Cloughie was in the dressing room no one said a word, so all of the players were sat around about ten minutes before we were going out to play.

“And he looked across the dressing room to Dave Currie, stared him straight in the eyes and said: ‘Have you found yourself a house yet Dave?’

“Dave said: ‘No, not yet boss’.

“’Don’t bother, son,’ Cloughie went.

“After three weeks at the club, he’d decided ‘he ain’t for me’.

“Cloughie was wonderful like that, to be fair.”

4. Cloughie’s hilarious response to Pat Jennings being hit with a dart by a Nottingham Forest fan

This tale begins in the late 1980s when Forest were entertaining Arsenal in a league clash at the City Ground.

Legendary keeper Pat Jennings turned around to collect the ball at the back of the Trent End before being hit by a dart thrown by a Forest fan.

The dart ended up becoming lodged in Jennings’ arm and the keeper bravely played on unaided, – but

“He thought that was the end of it [after the game] but then a letter arrived,” Former captain Pearce recalled.

Many years later at a function, Jennings would share the contents of that letter with Psycho.

“Pat went into his pocket and pulled a letter out when I was talking to him and told me to have a read of it.

“It read along the lines of: ‘Dear Pat, I have absolutely no sympathy. Every time you come to the City Ground you stop everything that comes in your direction. It’s of no surprise to me that you stopped the dart on this occasion, Lots of love. Brian’.

“I was absolutely laughing my head off.

3. Clough ‘terrified’ Vinnie Jones… and then smashed his ghetto blaster

Clough didn’t take kindly to Vinnie Jones’ choice of music at the City Ground

Not many people scare football hardman Jones, but he was apparently shaking in his boots after an angry encounter with Cloughie.

Goalkeeper Mark Crossley was in the dressing room as it all unfolded and shared the story.

“They were the first team to come with a ghetto blaster,” he explained.

“Vinnie’s walked in with it on his f****** shoulder, like, and you can see he [Clough] is thinking ‘what the f*** is that?’

“He’s stopped and he’s gone ‘Hilly, Hilly’ to Alan Hill. ‘Would you go and knock on their f***** dressing room door and ask them to turn that f****** music down?’

“So Alan Hill goes down and he knocks on door and Vinnie Jones opens door, the captain of Wimbledon, and he’s stood there in a pair of slips. Like f****** growling at Alan Hill like.

“And Alan Hill has gone ‘listen Vinnie, would you mind turning the music down? Our gaffer don’t like it.’ So Vinnie has gone ‘yeah, yeah, no problem’.

“So he turns it down and Alan Hill goes back up to dressing room. Of course, what happens? They turn it even louder.

“This happens again, so on the third time he [Clough] gets up and he walks down the corridor, and knocks on the door.

“Vinnie opens the door and Clough walks in their dressing room – and this is 10 to three by the way – picks the ghetto blaster up, smashes it and says ‘Now play your f****** music Wimbledon’. We f****** battered them 4-1, like.

“When I went to play for Wales and met Vinnie, like, Vinnie told me this story, you see.

“Even Crazy Gang didn’t say owt to him!”

2. Cloughie’s broken iron ultimatum

“I always felt he didn’t particularly like me, but accepted me” – revealed Forest stalwart Stuart Pearce in an interview.

Aged 24 and a stalwart in the Nottingham Forest defence, Stu still plugged his electrician work in the matchday programme. The fact that Pearce had placed the ad without the Gaffer’s permission infuriated Clough when he spotted it.

Mark Crossley shared what happened the next time Cloughie came face-to-face with Pearcy.

“In the dressing room shortly after Cloughy handed Stuart Pearce a broken iron and said, ‘Fix that and you’re in the team Saturday.”

“And sure enough, that iron was on Cloughie’s desk before the game!”

1. Crossley gets too big for his boots

My favourite story comes from Mark Crossley’s rich repertoire of Cloughie stories. I can’t do it justice, so I’ll let him …

“I was lucky enough to make my debut at 18-years-old for Forest,” the ex Tricky-Trees glovesman told a podcast.

“It was against Liverpool, but he didn’t tell me I was going to play in the game.”

“So I played against Liverpool, I played against Newcastle the following week, we beat them both and then we played against Coventry in the FA Cup, and we beat them. So I played three games and basically, long story short, I was probably getting a little bit too big for my boots, thinking I’d made it.

“He always had a plan in place for people that thought they were there when they actually weren’t, as I say I was only 18 years old…

“So his son, Simon Clough who now works with Nigel as a chief scout, Simon was the manager of a team in the Derbyshire Sunday League Division Five, and I’ll never forget this name, they were called AC Hunters FC.

“They haven’t got a goalkeeper for the Sunday morning, so after the game against Coventry, Cloughie has obviously seen that I’m getting a little bit too big for my boots, and thought how could he knock me back down to earth.

“So he said: ‘Where you going this weekend son?’

“I said: ‘I’m going home, I live in Barnsley.’

“He said: ‘My house tomorrow morning, 9 o’clock, bring you boots and your gloves… it would help.’

“So Chas the groundsman takes me to his house and I meet Barbara, his wife, and she says: ‘Hi Mark, come in, nice to meet you.’

“So we’re sat in the kitchen chatting away, he comes downstairs and he says: ‘Son…’

“I said: ‘Yes boss?’

“He said: ‘Thank you, I won’t call you what I usually call you because Barbara’s here… but I’d like to say thank you for agreeing to play for Simon’s team this morning. They haven’t got a goalkeeper and I thought you’d do, son.’

“So I’ve gone from playing in front of 30,000 against Liverpool, Newcastle and Coventry, to the next day playing in Division Five of the Derbyshire Sunday League for AC Hunters – he made me play for Simon’s team!

“And, the team got fined £50 for playing a ringer, so Cloughie took the £50 out of my wages at Nottingham Forest to pay the fine!

“I was only on £27.50 a week!

“We won 4-0, though…”

We dare say he probably learned his lesson… good ol’ Cloughie.