Book Review
THE DAMNED UNITED / David Peace
Step into the skin of a man driven to obsession. Record-holding goalscorer. European Champion, twice. Manager of soccer teams in small provincial towns who had no right to be successful, and the reason for their biggest sporting successes.
Brian Howard Clough, manager of Leeds United for a month and a fortnight in 1974, brought his uniquely combative will to a town, a team, that he had fiercely contested the Football League. A team in need of overhauling, whose ageing squad were fast reaching redundancy. A team who had won the League in the previous season, through hard tackles, gamesmanship and opposing principles to their new manager.
David Peace uses these brief weeks as a background for a semi-autobiographical book, told day-by-day as Clough's pugnacity came up against his new club of ageing soccer stars. Told from his point of view, the lonely sleepless nights, the doting family, and the constant plotting and scheming against enemies both within and without the club are brought to the fore. His remarkable will, eccentricity and flashes of indignant arrogance entertain in fiction as they did during Clough's life.
Leeds United ended their relationship after just forty-four days, during which time he tried to sell the entire squad, destroyed former manager Don Revie's office with an axe out of spite, went through drunken rages and ultimately alienated himself from everyone he worked with and for. Clough versus the World was the war that brought such success to Derby and Nottingham's clubs, and one which is relayed with intensity in these pages.