Can we believe in another miracle of the English midlands?
Taylor likened it to Huddersfield Town, a side who began 2015 13th in the Championship â the same position Forest were when Brian Clough took over the reins at the City Ground 40 years earlier â going on over the next five years to win the Premier League and back-to-back European Champions Leagues and Capital One Cups.
The current Premier League season was only a month old when Taylor was giving those interviews. Now there is a much simpler and more vivid example he could make. Imagine Leicester City winning the Premier League?
Back in September, Taylor like everyone else, couldnât. âPeople keep saying âit will never happen again,ââ he said of Forestâs incredible ascent and title win, âand thatâs very true.â
Even a fortnight ago, when Leicester ransacked Chelsea for a couple of goals and with it essentially sacked Jose, Jamie Carragher and Frank Lampard spoke for nearly everyone in saying the best Leicester could reasonably aspire to was a top-four spot.
Yet the following morning, seeing a photograph of Riyad Mahrezâs shot curling into the top corner past the outstretching Thibaut Courtois, this column couldnât help but be struck by its similarity with a goal of John Robertsonâs from Forestâs title-winning season of 1977-78.
Because of the miracle of that season, I ended up being a Nottingham Forest supporter. And to this day I have a book documenting that magical season, featuring a glorious picture of Robertson curling one into the top corner. The only difference between it and Mahrezâs strike being that Man Cityâs Joe Corrigan rather than Courtois is the helpless keeper, and Robertson has the panache to raise his arm before the ball even hits the net.
History couldnât repeat itself all over again, could it?
The film hardly offers a template for Claudio Ranieri and his team to follow.
Visually, the documentary is stunning, with terrific footage of a team and an era that had been underappreciated and even forgotten.
But overall the film lacks the kind of insight and grittiness that the ESPN 30 for 30 series routinely offers. As much as the Forest story is, above everything else, a feelgood one, too often it is as if director Jonny Owen is more interested in fitting in another late 70s disco track to make up the grooviest soundtrack to a UK sports documentary ever rather than a great documentary.
All the great sports films and books are about much more than sport: They tell you something about the country of that time, and provide a level of tension and a character study. The film would have benefited hugely with a contributor like a Duncan Hamilton, author of the fabulous Provided You Donât Kiss Me, to offer both a wider social historical perspective of mid-70s midland Britain as well as a more critical yet intimate insight into a man as complex and as compelling as Clough.
As well-documented as the Clough-Taylor dynamic has been, weâd have preferred if Owen had delved a little less into archive footage of the 1979 European Cup campaign (he slavishly goes through that competition, game-by-game) and instead emotionally and thematically deeper.
To Owenâs credit, he recognised that there was a lot his film left out, with much of what remained on the cutting room floor being handed over to Taylor for the accompanying, more-detailed book.
What does come across loud and clear in the film though is just how everyone expected Forest to trip up, that they couldnât sustain their blistering early-season form.
Maybe Leicester will blow up like Aston Villa did in 1999 â we forget that in Unitedâs treble-winning season, John Gregory topped the table at Christmas only for his team to drop out of the race with over a dozen games to go.
Maybe theyâll be more like Norwich City, who in the inaugural year of the Premiership were still hanging around near the top of the table with half a dozen games to go only for Giggs, Kanchelskis and Cantona to stride into Carrow Road and blitz them for three goals in 20 minutes. By the seasonâs end Mike Walkerâs team had a minus goal difference record, albeit enough points to finish third.
More than once weâve watched that 1992-93 season on the Premiership Years, Skyâs equivalent of Reeling In The Years, and wondered at just how marvellously innocent and democratic it was in so many ways. Mickey Quinn eating pies while banging in hat-tricks for Coventry. Norwich finished in third, QPR in fifth, while Arsenal ended up just 10th, and reigning league champs Leeds just above the relegation zone.
This season seems like a throwback to that time, before the big money really kicked in and Alex Ferguson took a Cody-like hold on the league.
In revelling/or despairing in the misery of Mourinho and Man United, dissecting the foibles of Arsenal and Man City, and scoffing at the idea of this being âthe best league in the worldâ as it genuinely was a little over only half-a-decade ago, we could miss the real story. Never mind the quality, embrace the romance.
Pardew and Palace in fifth, Watford thumping Liverpool 3-0, Southampton thumping Arsenal by four, Bournemouth sacking â almost literally â Jose and LVG, Watford in eighth, Stoke playing like Barcelona...
Itâs like Gaelic football returning to the noughties again, with Westmeath and Laois beating Dublin and winning Leinsters, Sligo winning Connacht, Fermanagh and Wexford making All- Ireland semi-finals...
And of course, thereâs Leicester.
I mightnât believe in miracles but this season Iâm not discounting one either.
