Unexpected Winners: Nottingham Forest 1977/78 Division One

This is by the far the furthest we've gone back in our unexpected winners series but its for very good reason. Brian Clough and Peter Taylor were very much responsible for putting Nottingham Forest on the map when it comes to football and their legacy is still very tangible today. Clough has a statue in his honour in Nottingham's city centre and one of the stands at the City Ground also bears his name.

In fact, what Clough and Taylor achieved over a three year period was so impressive that even Gary Neville said "it would never be done again", and to be fair to Gary he's right so far. Just over 40 years have passed since the time frame in question and whilst some teams have matched or bettered some of Forest's individual accolades, none have even come close to the whole thing.

What's even more remarkable is that none of it would have been possible without one of the shortest managerial stints in English football history. In July 1974, Clough left his job at Brighton and Hove Albion to succeed Don Revie as manager of Leeds United. Revie had spent 13 years in charge of Leeds and lead the Yorkshire club through the greatest period in its history. He is also honoured with a statue and stand at Elland Road today and is very much the basis for the Whites standing amongst football clubs today.

Clough was given the job off the back of his very successful spell at Derby County where he had beat Revie and Leeds to the Division One title in 1972. It would be fair to say that Clough and Revie weren't the best of friends with Brian accusing Don's Leeds side as "dirty" and "cheating" which made his appointment all the more surprising. Reportedly during one of his first training sessions with his new club, Clough told the players "throw your medals in the bin because they weren't won fairly".

Unsurprisingly, the greats of the Whites like Billy Bremner and Eddie Gray didn't take too well to that and quite quickly the Middlesbrough native had alienated his players. Clough won just one of his first six games in charge and was sacked after just 44 days in the job. Until Darko Milanic's winless first six games in 2014, he was the club's least successful permanent manager.

After his sacking Clough went on Yorkshire TV's Calendar opposite Revie to discuss his time in the job. It was a bickering match that turned into TV gold and Brian's brief time in the job was immortalised by the 2009 film 'The Damned United'.

In January 1975, just 12 weeks after the Leeds debacle, Clough took over at Nottingham Forest. Before his arrival the Tricky Trees had been a largely unsuccessful club who had spent most of their time in the second tier of English football. After only half a season in charge, Forest finished 16th under Clough who had brought in John McGovern and John O'Hare from Leeds in February. They then finished 8th after his first full season in charge in the 1975/76 campaign.

That summer, Brian was reunited with Taylor who joined as his assistant manager again for the first time since Brighton. Taylor was the real talent spotter of the two and told Clough he was impressed they had finished as high as 8th with some of the squad "only being third division players". The two of them would revolutionise Forest from then on, getting the tricky John Robertson onto a new diet and training regime and turning Tony Woodcock into an international level striker.

Taylor would also help Clough get the best out of local boy Viv Anderson and a young Martin O'Neill. The club won their first silverware since 1959 by winning the 1976/77 Anglo-Scottish Cup with Brian marking it as a key turning point because they'd "won something". The Tricky Trees would then be promoted at the end of that season finishing in third place with a unusually low points tally of 52.

It was far from expected then, that Forest would pull up any trees (excuse the pun) in the top flight the following season. A few key additions would change all that though, with Taylor helping to sign hardman Kenny Burns from Birmingham and turning him from a centre forward into a centre back. They would then add Peter Shilton in between the sticks and would be reunited with another former Derby player, Archie Gemmill.

Forest were electric and would win the 1978 League Cup 1-0 against Liverpool in a replay, before going on to clinch the Championship seven points clear of Bob Paisley's Liverpool. Forest are the last team to win the First Division the season after they were promoted (a feat that will probably never be repeated now) and Clough became only the third of four managers to win the English Championship with two different clubs. The Tricky Trees would also go on a 42 match unbeaten run which was an English record until the Arsenal invincible of 2004.

After that though, Clough and Taylor would somehow elevate the Reds even higher, signing English football's first £1 million player, Trevor Francis, from Birmingham in 1979. Francis would score the winner later that year in the first of back-to-back European Cup wins for Forest, a trophy that Revie was never able to win for Leeds.

No English manager has ever been able to repeat the feat since Clough and his and Taylor's achievements have left an indelible mark on the history of both English and European football.