Quotes from Brian Clough

They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but I wasn't on that particular job.

When I go, God's going to have to give up his favourite chair.

Walk on water? I know most people out there will be saying that instead of walking on it, I should have taken more of it with my drinks. They are absolutely right.

The RAF allowed me to play a lot of football, but like England later, they failed to recognise real talent when it was under their noses.

My early memories are full of football talk around the house, of Dad standing on the terraces at Ayresome Park, of the occasional precious new pair of boots.

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive.

We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass.

Who the hell wants fourteen pairs of shoes when they go on holiday? I haven't had fourteen pairs in my life.

Beckham? His wife can't sing and his barber can't cut hair.

We used to go to the pictures every Saturday night but we had to leave a little bit early and get home and watch Match of the Day - and my wife still complains she missed the last five minutes of every film we saw.

I was never, ever physically afraid. My terms of reference were basic and simple: put the ball in the net. That was my job, that's the way I saw it, and I allowed nothing and nobody to distract me from that purpose.

Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes.

Believe it or not, cricket was my first love. I would genuinely have swapped the dream of a winning goal at Wembley for a century against the Australians at Lord's.

I like my women to be feminine, not sliding into tackles and covered in mud.

Academically, I was thick. School wasn't bad, but I was.

That Seaman is a handsome young man but he spends too much time looking in his mirror rather than at the ball. You can't keep goal with hair like that.

Telling the entire world and his dog how good a manager I was. I knew I was the best but I should have said nowt and kept the pressure off 'cos they'd have worked it out for themselves.

I've decided to pick my moment to retire very carefully – in about 200 years' time.

To me, scoring goals was just like other boys might regard delivering papers. I just did it - every day.

They love me for what I'm not They hate me for what I am.

On occasions I have been big-headed. I think most people are when they get in the limelight. I call myself Big Head just to remind myself not to be.

If a chairman sacks the manager he initially appointed, he should go as well.

The river Trent is lovely, I know because I have walked on it for 18 years.

If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there.