Brian Clough - In the Top One of Football Managers
But whatever your opinion of Old Big 'Ead - footballing genius or egotistical drunk - there can be no denying the impact he had on the British game.
It says something that this week, almost 16 years after he retired, Clough still dominates the front and back pages of the newspapers.
For those that remember him in his prime, it was a nostalgic trip back to the 1970s and 80s.
When Brian Clough spoke, people listened.
Clough was the first manager to use his own media profile as a tool in his footballing success.
In an age when managers predominantly lurked in the background, he took delight in giving interviews that raised not only his own stock, but that of his clubs.
He gave birth to the notion of football 'one-liners', sparking a new style of management that still lives on today in former pupils like Martin O'Neill and in world superstars like Jose Mourinho.
As a player, Clough was prolific.
Better known for his management career, he actually scored a staggering 251 goals in 274 league appearances for Middlesbrough, his hometown club, and Sunderland - a far better ratio than counterparts Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Charlton.
But with only two England caps to his name, Clough's career was ended early in 1962 after suffering a cruciate ligament injury.
A lot has been written about what came next.
Joining forces with teammate Peter Taylor, Clough and Taylor became one of the most successful management teams ever in English football.
They took provincial teams to heights never seen before or since, and possibly to heights that those clubs will never see again.
Clough won the second division title and league championship with Derby County, now managed by his son Nigel and struggling in England's second tier.
After a less successful with Taylor at Brighton & Hove Albion - and an ill fated 44 day reign at Leeds (crucially, without Taylor) - Clough and his trusted number two returned to the East Midlands and took charge at Nottingham Forest.
In eighteen years at the City Ground, Clough won promotion from division two, four league cups, the league championship and two European Cup titles.
Forest, now fighting for survival in the Championship, remain the only team to have won the European Cup twice having only won their domestic league once - and are one of just three British teams to have been crowned Champions of Europe twice.
The trophies are well documented but we take an alternative look at the five most defining moments in Clough's management career.
The injury Clough was always likely to be a manager.
He, with Peter Taylor, spent hours watching games before his career had ended, judging players and analysing tactics.
But when a serious cruciate ligament injury ended Clough's prolific playing career early at the age of 27, it gave him the chance to dip his toes in the unforgiving world of management.
When he took his first management job at Hartlepool aged 30, Clough was the youngest manager in the football league.
It gave him a reputation - and an arrogance - that set the tone for his long management career.
Anglo-Scottish Cup You may not have even heard of the competition and when Nottingham Forest beat Leyton Orient 5-1 on aggregate to win the 1977 Anglo-Scottish Cup, it meant little to anyone outside of Nottingham.
But to Brian Clough, who was beginning to build his team of champions, it was a huge victory that gave his side a winning mentality.
Within twelve months they were champions of England, followed of course by two consecutive European Cup victories.
Many of Clough's players at Forest had not experienced winning a trophy before the Anglo-Scottish Cup, but three years later after Forest had won their second European Cup, the changing room had the same victorious atmosphere - and the same beaming smiles.
Seven of the starting line up for the 1980 European Cup Final had been involved in the Leyton Orient ties.
As Clough later said: "They got the taste for champagne -and they liked it.
" Leaving Leeds United Quite simply, Brian Clough's time at Leeds United was not a success.
Whatever his reasons for taking the job, and whatever really did happen in his short time at the club, it was a gamble that never paid off for Clough, or for Leeds.
But his eventual sacking, and the estimated £98,000 pay-off by the clubs directors, set Clough up for life.
The working class boy from Middlesbrough no longer had to worry about poverty, or unemployment.
His livelihood, his very existence, no longer relied on being a success as a football manager.
And it gave Clough the freedom to enjoy his management without pressure - of which Nottingham Forest clearly reaped the benefits.
Not getting the England job "One reason I never became the England manager was because the FA thought I would take over and run the show.
They were dead right.
" Never one to miss an opportunity to build himself up, Clough was believed to be angry when he was overlooked for the England job in 1977.
But whatever the FA reasoning really was, it spurred Clough on to astonishing domestic success.
The following year Forest won the league championship to set up a remarkable run of trophies.
With no international appointment, Clough saw the European Cup as the closest success achievable as a domestic manager - and in his own style he proved the FA wrong by claiming two consecutive victories in 1979 and 1980.
Peter Taylor's autobiography Clough and Taylor were a remarkable duo.
In Clough's words, Taylor was essential: "I'm not equipped to manage successfully without Peter Taylor.
I am the shop window and he is the goods in the back.
" But when Peter Taylor released an autobiography in 1980 , a book about which Clough apparently had no knowledge, it signalled the beginning of a famous, sad feud between the pair.
The book was largely based on Taylor's career with Clough and featured his manager, by far the most high profile of the two, on the front cover.
Taylor eventually left Forest to become Derby County manager in 1982 and Clough never tasted success on the scale of the Clough-Taylor years again.
Clough had already failed without Taylor at Leeds and it became evident in his final years at Nottingham Forest that he was not the same manager without his trusted talent spotter alongside him.
When Taylor signed John Robertson from Forest in 1983, apparently without telling Clough again, the feud heightened and the pair tragically never spoke again before Taylor's death in 1990.