I was 13 and very interested in Soccer/ football and loved to see Cloughie in his interviews. I agreed with him in some regards to the way Leeds played and how he wanted to play, so in that respects it was always going to be a bad fit for manager and players and a mistake by Cloughie and the board at that time.Still, I still loved Cloughie, faults or not. He did later prove just what he might have achieved for Leeds, if only the board would have had the strength of their own decision to appoint him in the first place and continue to back him. In the end I feel Leeds lost out by being weak.I think it would be fair to say that quite a few of the Leeds players were reaching the end of their best playing days and would need to be replaced before too long and Cloughie was aware of that, plus he had his own way of thinking how a team should play. I blame the players as much as Cloughie for things not going right in his time with them. he showed with Forest that he knew had to win a match and trophies and that was Leeds loss in the end.* I am getting fed up of Brits having a go at the Americans for calling it Soccer, well why not? It is a English saying developed in the mid 19th century to differ Rugby Football and association football. Hence Rugger and Soccer. As a northern lad of the sixties, I can well remember always calling it soccer and fairly certain my friends did as well.

The story, being a factual one is a great background to see. How the focus role Clough rise to his highest level, plunged into nothingness, all with his great ambitions, and ultimately reunite with his tandem to regain what was lost and even surpassing those, is the whole idea of this biography. The dramatization of Clough's rather irritating character is also done well through the nice direction. Michael Sheen really got into character of being irritating. He got his facial expressions nicely in the length of the movie. Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent and Colin Meaney acted out nicely the critical conflicts that utterly define the center focus of Clough's character.

Brian Clough was an enigma: a man whose record as a football manager was (given the resources at his disposal) second to none, but who relied on his assistant Peter Taylor to spot players, had no great technical expertise and whose approach to man management was decidedly eccentric. He was brilliantly quick minded but also an alcoholic; a supposed socialist who was accused of taking unauthorised commissions on transactions; and a man who went to Leeds United, a club he hated, and was famously sacked in just 44 days. David Peace's ambitious novel, 'The Damned United', offers one imaginative take on Clough's psychology during this period; but as a film, it's a poor effort. Michael Sheen, Tony Blair in a number of other screenplays by writer Pter Morgan, doesn't quite convince as Clough, and makes him seen more like a blustering fool than an intelligent man. Of course, that famous Graham Taylor documentary may have punctured our illusions about so-called football genius; but still, I was looking for some clue as to what Clough did well (except, of course, at Leeds) and didn't get it. Bad wigs abound. And Clough's complex relationship with Taylor is reduced to a piece of routine male bonding, with Tomothy Spall playing Talor as a man with the charisma of a lead balloon and whose importance to Clough remains totally mystifying. From Peace's book, one gets a view of a talented and ambitious man who over-reached himself, an unique individual both arrogant and exposed. This translation lacks the depth; and sadly, therefore, also the point.

Perhaps the film could have been longer, so that while Clough was developed surprisingly well and avoided going into caricature, the rest of the characters could have been more so. But this is a very good film regardless.It is very well directed by Tom Hooper(The King's Speech), and is shot beautifully complete with striking scenery. The dialogue is excellent and involving, and no the odd anachronism didn't bother me besides I have heard much worse, and so is the story, while the football is exciting the more drama-driven sequences also impress.The acting is excellent across the board, but the film belongs to Michael Sheen, while not necessarily a tour-de-force(like in Fantabulosa!) Sheen does nail it making every trait of Clough believable.All in all, a very good film. 9/10 Bethany Cox