When Brian Clough promised a miracle, and delivered

A few years back I asked Roy Keane at a press conference if he thought it was inconceivable in the modern game that a team might ever emulate what his old club Nottingham Forest achieved between 1977 and 1980 when, having confounded all predictions by winning the First Division title as a newly promoted side, they then they proceeded to stun the whole world of football by claiming back to back European Cups.

“Never say never,” Keane replied, hardly convincingly, before adding the crucial kicker, “but don’t forget that Brian Clough was a genius.”

Just how much of peculiar kind of genius he was, is imprinted on virtually every frame and every page of I Believe In Miracles, the film and companion book of the same name which, between them, relate the ultimate football fairytale of ugly ducklings turned into swans — the improbable transformation of a mid-table Second Division provincial side into the crowned heads of European football.