The Damned Utd

The Damned Utd is a fictionalized account of Brian Clough’s 44 controversial days as manager of Leeds United at the start of the 1974-75 season. And it is brilliant.

Author David Peace gets inside the head of “Cloughie” and gets inside the inner workings of a football club in a way that few have ever done so well. He ably illuminates the intense pressure, the petty jealousies and struggles for power between directors, managers and star players and the immense personal sacrifice that goes into being a manager at the very top of the game. 

The Damned Utd is a day-by-day account of Clough’s entire spell at Leeds United – the matches, the trainings, the meetings but also the heavy drinking, the bitter arguments, the ego, the self-doubt, the regrets. He recounts the hostility he faced when arriving at a Leeds United still under the spell of previous manager Don Revie and his attempts to shake things up including, memorably, taking apart Revie’s old desk with an axe. But more important than all the details he puts you inside Clough’s head and allows you to live them out as Clough himself. And it ain’t pretty.

Interspersed with the Leeds United days are flashbacks and memories of his career in football to that point – his playing career as a free-scoring forward cut short by injury, his start in management at Hartlepool with sidekick Peter Taylor, their highly successful time at Derby County which ended in their controversial resignations, his brief (and disastrous) time at Brighton and his outspoken commentary on TV and in the newspaper. It was these flashbacks that I found most enjoyable, reliving how he and his assistant Peter Taylor built up Derby County with hard, hard work and then saw it torn apart by jealous directors. 

David Peace uses repetition to great effect, with certain phrases reappearing over and over throughout the book, sometimes subtly changing them to fit the context.

Fields of loss and fields of hate, fields of blood and fields of war – to describe Leeds United’s stadium Elland Road.

Under the stands, through the doors, round the corner, down the corridor – always the way to Don Revie’s old office. 

I struggle to find anything negative to say about this book. A great read and a nice, if very, very different, companion to The Glory Game, Hunter Davies’ inside account of Tottenham Hotspur in the early 1970s.

The Damned Utd
By David Peace
346 pages
Faber and Faber, 2006