The Damned United proves Cloughie was perfect for the big screen, says Terry Staunton

It’s not often that a film’s most noticeable, perhaps only, stumbling block is that its star is actually too good, but it’s arguably the case with Michael Sheen’s turn as Brian Clough in The Damned United. Sheen is, as we all know, the go-to guy du jour for screen portrayals of real people, his stock ever rising after taking on, in the last five years alone, Tony Blair (twice), Kenneth Williams and David Frost.

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Forest and Derby may not be closest neighbours but time has created a twisted rivalry. Al Needham reports

The relationship between Nottingham Forest and Derby Country may seem a little strange, but it’s actually no different to the ones you see on Jeremy Kyle on a weekday morning. So many elements bind them together, but it’s those very elements that drive them apart like inverse magnets.

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AC Milan once outbid Barcelona for his services, but three years later he was on the Bolton bench. James Calder reports on a player once known as “Killer”

Few players cause as much head-scratching as the one-season wonder. Former AC Milan and Bolton misfit Javi Moreno is one such accidental hero.

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Kevin Donnelly had always been jealous of footballers’ parents – until he went to watch his mate’s son play

In 40 years attending football matches, I thought I had experienced everything. That is, until the day I went to a match with the dad of one of the players taking part in a Scottish Premier League game. As a young player who is basically starting out, his son was looking to build on a promising string of results for his team in which he had started all the games.

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How could the best player in the school end up doing DIY while an unknown captained England? Howard Pattison ponders the thin line between international stardom and obscurity

A friend once told me that at school he had been voted the boy most likely to become a professional footballer. We never had opinion polls like that at my school. Most of us never had opinions. But if we had been asked which of our classmates would go on to kick a ball around a field for a living, I can guess who it would have been. Captain of the school team, played with both feet, read the game brilliantly. Perhaps he was a bit on the short side, but he was stocky with it. “A low centre of gravity” they would say now, like Maradona. Had stamina too, what they would call a real box-to-box player. Bryan Robson, perhaps.

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