Customer Reviews

Damned Utd

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a must read for any fan of English soccer/football.

Here's what you should know going in: Brian Clough was a legendary English manager, known for his cantankerous personality and massive drinking problem.

This book is fictional account of Brian Clough's 44 days of failure at Leeds United, written from his perspective, and interwoven with his great success at Derby County before he got the Leeds job, and at Nottingham Forest after he was fired by Leeds.

It is very well researched by David Pearce, acting as a mini biography of Clough while providing great insight into his personality. It's very well written too, I could barely put it down.

We all have our "Dirty Leeds" in life. And please, I don't really know how this team played or judge them, these are just adjectives to me and work as a metaphor.

Okay, the basics are this is a running monologue, fiction based on true stories of a legendary football/soccer manager, Brian Clough. It is close to a one dimensional portrait of Clough, showing his aversion to "Dirty Leeds", a successful team back in the day of the mid-seventies who won the league that Derby played in, Derby being the team Clough managed prior to obtaining the head position at Leeds Utd. Football Club in 1974 and managering them for a period of only 44 days.

There is a lot to this book on reflecting on it for some time. In principle, Clough has an ethical and principaled dislike of the style of winning and play with which Leeds United Football Club became champions of Division I (not the Premier League which is the 'modern' name) English soccer, it is indeed an obsession of Clough's. Let's give Clough the benefit of the doubt & let's suppose he has some right to hold these views. Leeds losing their former manager Don Revie who goes on to manage the England National Team hired Brian Clough who goes out to tear down and start anew the Leeds Club, to build it up from scratch in a way he sees suitable, selling off old players, etc. and with the new Leeds, a new silky smooth style of play was his vision.

'Cloughie' may have been successful at Leeds but for personal problems such as being cantankerous as he was and alcoholism which unfortunately, he really did suffer from in life. Now, I am wondering why Clough was so successful at Nottingham Forest a few years later though clearly, this was a big learning experience. Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough as an aside, is a good treatise of his time at Nottingham by a journalist who got to know Clough very well, Duncan Hamilton's book was the William Hill sports book of the year. How might the situation at Leeds have gone if Clough had been able to contain his demons? Or was it the board of directors that did not give him enough "lead way"? As usual, there is more to the story than meets the eye. Clough's success in managing also seems highly dependent on his left-hand man, even virtually a co-manager, Peter Taylor. Taylor was at Hartlepool, Derby and Nottingham, all places of success for Clough. No Taylor at Leeds and obviously, no success.

The book really came alive it was so exciting, starting around pages 70-80 once I got use to the style of narrative here. The innovative writing style is used by Peace to present primarily two parallel stories that meet up with each other in time and intersect. Definitely worth a read but please, there are dozens of books on the subjects, of both Leeds United and Brian Clough. It is best to consider this book as but one volume out of many.

A movie has come out, "The Damned United", but you consider other books out there such as the one about his time at Derby previously,Clough's War: Nothing Stirred Him More than a Fight Brian Cough's Battle for Derby County and you could have more movies, maybe a tv series.

Peace gets inside the head of legendary manager Brian Clough as his inner monologue weaves back and forth between his successful run at Derby County to his short and contentious tenure at Leeds United in the 70s. As a sports book this is first rate. Clough was an acknowledged tough manager and he is portrayed here warts and all as a man who made few compromises in his pursuit of success on and off the pitch. Peace writes in a style that drives home Clough's obsession using constant repetition and flashback sequences that took me a short while to get adjusted to. Once you get into his rhythm the book is a very entertaining read. A knowledge of English football certainly helps to make sense of all this. Can't wait to see the film version.

Fascinating story about a bygone era. From a distance of 3,000 miles, Brian Clough always struck me as a brilliant but flawed man, and this novel certainly portrayed both his genius and his myriad failings. Gifted but stubborn; charming but angry; sentimental but insensitive; rigid but rogueish - he was all these and more, and the novel - based on his catastrophic 44-day reign at Leeds United - presents it all. Highly recommended.

hmm, I am still undecided about this. I grew up in the English midlands and am still a die-hard Stoke City supporter, although exposed to large quantities of "Cloughie". I cannot decide what I really think of this book, as I did not know any of the protagonists well enough. You certainly get a sense from Brian Cloughs autobiographies that he might have been like this, but to be fair, who has a constantly running internal monologue like the one presented in the book? That being said, it is certainly a powerful book, and in my opinion sometimes reads more like a war story, certainly in the attitude of the troops to the new unpopular commander. I'm delighted to report that Stoke handed out some monumental batterings to Leeds in the 70s, and that Don Revie turned out to be a rubbish England manager and a traitor to English football. It indeed was a crime that Clough was no6t given the England managers job, especially when you see some of the clowns that subsequently held the post. (Glen Hoddle anyone?) Cloughie simply upset too many mandarins in the FA and his outspoken personality was ultimately his undoing.

As much as anything, this book shows the changes that football has undergone in the intervening 30 years, gone are the days where the manager was conducting the deals directly with players, doing backroom stuff, watering the pitches, and football is the worse for it. The game has been re-engineered to suit a fewer number of global megaclubs and it is no longer the pursuit of the working man.

I know that the majority of reviewers on this site of American, and well done to those of you that have tackled this book, but I do recommend you dig out some old clips of his inteviews and read some more about him. He may not have been a likeable man, but he was always in interesting one, a flawed one, and a talented one.

Perhaps this book does convey some of the essence of what Cloughie was about after all.

While this IS a novelization about football manager great Brian Clough, this is far more than just another football book. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you're in the market for another Football Factory, you might be looking in the wrong place. This is a novel, based on an historic event, about a turning point in a man's life where his nightmares have washed together with his dreams. It is about paranoia, aging, the price of success, and betrayal and loyalty, and it is fantastic. And the main character just happens to be Cloughie. So if you're in the market for that, then this is an wonderful, wonderful book. And if you're not, than I would buy it anyway and know that's what you're getting.

Unless you're a diehard football fan (preferably a fan of the English game), this book is likely to be of no interest. If you are such a reader, then its subject matter, a socialist alcoholic, footballing purist who did win English and European titles (but not with Leeds, the Damned United), makes the novel readable, despite itself.

What narrative purpose is hoped to be achieved by such repetitious phrasing - how many times do we need to hear that Brian is walking up he stairs, around the corners, under the stands? Peace repeats this mantra, ad infinitum. And, at the risk of being a total anorak, the fact that over half the league tables are wrong, is truly bothersome. These standings are inserted, one assumes, to give a perspective to the following chapter; to let us know the position in the league of Leeds or Derby as the next few pages unfold. But most of them are WRONG! With a little more research (and the bibliography suggests there was a lot) the author could have made his point about Leed's struggle more telling. Such fundamental errors are bizarre, although it remains an interesting read as long as one remembers it IS fiction (there's no way anyone could possibly know exactly what went on in Clough's mind, or what he said in private meetings.

Perhaps fictionalized league standings are designed to remind us it is all fantasy.

I got this book because I heard about the movie being made and thought I would read the book first. The book is phenomenal. I absolutely love the writing style. It makes a steady read and you really get into the mind of Brian Clough. I like the fact that you don't have to know that much about football to understand it--it's really about Clough and his struggles. I am excited to see Michael Sheen's performance in the new film, but I know it will not compare to this extraordinary book.

Many people will say that this is the best book written about sport; they're right, but it's much more than that.

Some of the other reviewers have stated that this book will only be of interest to hardcore english football fans but this is fortunately not the case, scenes actually describing football are few and minimal; in fact i'd say that you wouldn't need to even be a huge sport fan to enjoy this book.

The vast majority of this book presents a fictionalised (legendary Irish footballer and now television pundit Johnny Giles who played for Leeds under Clough sued the publishers for libel and eventually minor changes were made to the book) account of one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in English sport, a man who was one of the most talented managers ever yet was plagued by his inner demons, a man who revelled in the glory of victory and wallowed in the misery of defeat. He is an anti-hero; foul mouthed, vengeful, alcoholic and yet utterly likeable because of his disarming honesty and sincerity. Despite the fact that the reader knows the inevitable ending of the story before the start this book is an absolute page turner which will keep you hooked until the end.

If you liked this you might also like the film version staring Michael Sheen of Frost/Nixon and The Queen fame as Cloughie

you must be a serious Leeds fan a la 1970 and you will love this book. Others will also find it pretty entertaining.