Clough given two months to live prior to liver transplant

FORMER Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough had just two months to live before he underwent a successful liver transplant, his surgeon said yesterday.

The transplant team also found cancer in his diseased liver when they performed the operation last week at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital.

But consultant Derek Manas told a news conference the growth had been removed, and the man affectionately known throughout football as 'Cloughie' was making a good recovery.

Manas said: "He is recovering very well. In fact things are going so well he could be going home in a week."

Clough, who is being treated as an NHS patient, was in good spirits, the surgeon said, adding: "He is being his old self, teaching us all how to play golf and telling us what, and what not, to do."

A suitable organ was found last Sunday in Ireland, Manas said. Experts flew out to receive it and Clough, 67, and his family travelled from his Derbyshire home to the northeast.

The organ arrived in Newcastle at 5am last Monday and two hours later the operation began.

Manas said: "It was straightforward. The only complication was that he had liver cancer and we had to give him some chemotherapy. This is a normal protocol." The consultants faced a tough decision about whether or not to give Clough, a self-confessed heavy drinker, a new liver. The transplant expert said strict tests had shown Clough had not been drinking for at least six months.

"At one stage he said, to be honest, he feels very privileged he has been allowed to be considered because of the amount of alcohol he has consumed in the past, and I respect that in him.

"If we had any doubt about what would happen when he walked out of here we wouldn't have done it regardless of whether he is Brian Clough."

The patient, who led Forest to two European Cup triumphs during his career as a manager, which also saw him win the Division One title with Derby County, had not received special treatment because of his fame, Manas said.

"It had nothing to do with him being a celebrity. He was transplanted on the merits of his disease," he said.

Manas explained Clough went to Newcastle for the operation because of an arrangement the Freeman, a centre of excellence, has with Clough's local hospital in Derby.