The Damned United

I went to see this film with a certain trepidation as I don't always understand the true workings of the so-called beautiful game. I'm often rather lost by the offside rule, not too sure what actually constitutes handball and can't quite understand why a good friend can kiss a poster of George Weah and refer to the Liberian as a God. However, I can recognise what a worldwide phenomenon football has become and the massive status that the late Brian Clough held within in the sport.

Clough was one heck of a character and very much of his time and this is where 'The Damned United' really succeeds. You feel like you are truly watching the 70s when men were men and modern players like constant diver Cristiano Ronaldo would have been laughed (or even kicked) off the pitch. Sheen gives an excellent performance and Clough is portrayed as a complex individual with the sort of charisma and wit, which may endear him to cinema-goers who have little knowledge of football or the man himself.

However, I saw this film with a friend who is a huge soccer fan and who confessed afterwards to having certain problems with the accuracy of the story. The film is after all based on a book by David Peace, which merges the facts with his own fiction to show what he thought might being going on behind the scenes during Clough's reign as manager of Derby County and his infamous 44 days in charge at Leeds United. Having recently watched some TV dramatisations of Peace's other novels involving the real life Yorkshire Ripper murders it is easy to see why some people find his particular way of merging fact with fiction lacking in credibility. I personally didn't have such a problem with this film as I felt it really got to grips with who Clough was as a football manager and his probable motives for how he went about the job at Leeds.

While the film's narrative sometimes veers confusingly back and forth between Clough's time at Derby and his short spell at Leeds, 'The Damned United' is a really enjoyable piece of entertainment full of great actors bringing to life intriguing characters. The ultimate strength of the film is that the story manages to become more about friendship (the relationship between Brian and Peter Taylor) and the destructiveness of vanity rather than how many football matches Clough won.

Brian Clough (1935-2004) has some claim to be regarded as the greatest ever club manager in English football. Others, such as Bob Paisley and Sir Alex Ferguson, may have won more in terms of trophies, but they did so after taking over clubs which were already wealthy, successful and established. Clough's unique achievement was to take over a struggling, unsuccessful Second Division club, Derby County, turn them into English champions, and then to repeat this feat with a second struggling, unsuccessful Second Division club, Nottingham Forest, who went on to become not only English champions but also European champions.

Clough's career in football management, however, was not an uninterrupted success story, and "The Damned United" tells the story of his greatest failure, his 44-day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974. Over the past decade, under the management of Don Revie, Leeds had become one of the leading clubs in England, and in 1974 were reigning League champions. They were, however, also the most hated club in England, having become notorious not only for a cautious, defensive attitude to the game but also for gamesmanship and violent play.

Although Clough and Revie loathed one another, they had much in common. Both came from the same town, Middlesbrough, growing up only a few streets apart. Both had enjoyed successful playing careers, playing at centre-forward, both had been capped for England, and both had played for the same club, Sunderland. Revie had also taken over Leeds United as a struggling Second Division club and had turned them into champions. Yet they had very different attitudes to the game. In contrast to Revie's "win-at-all-costs" attitude, Clough was an idealist with a firm belief in fair play and open, attacking football; he frequently referred to "the beautiful game", long before this phrase had become the cliché it is today. When Revie was appointed as England manager, Clough therefore seemed a strange choice to replace him as Leeds manager, especially as he had been one fiercest critics both of the club and of Revie. (Many other managers, in fact, agreed with Clough's opinions in private, but few had dared to express them quite so publicly).

Clough's main weakness as a manager appears to have been his lack of tact and diplomacy. He was fond of speaking his mind, and despite winning the Championship with Derby had been ousted as manager of that club following clashes with the club chairman Sam Longson. According to this film, Clough's first act as Leeds manager was to tell his players to throw away all their medals and trophies, "because they won them by cheating". Given this attitude, it is hardly surprising that Clough was disliked by the Leeds players, most of whom had idolised Revie. They were determined not to take Clough's message of "good, clean attractive football" to heart; during his first match in charge of Leeds, the Charity Shield against Liverpool, the club captain, Billy Bremner, was red-carded for brawling on the pitch with an opponent. (He received an 11-game suspension and never played again under Clough's management). Discontent among the players was a major factor in persuading the club's directors to dismiss Clough after a run of poor results.

The film is not a comprehensive biopic of Clough; it concentrates on his brief spell at Leeds, with the story of his days at Derby being told in flashback. It does not deal with his early life or playing career at all, only briefly touches on his private life outside the game, and his successes with Nottingham Forest are only mentioned in passing in an epilogue at the end. It presents a fictionalised version of his life and occasionally takes liberties with the facts. (Contrary to the impression given here, Dave Mackay, a one-time Derby player who succeeded Clough as manager, was not on the club's playing staff at the time of his appointment).

The film's main virtues are an excellent script from Peter Morgan and some equally excellent acting. Michael Sheen seems to specialise in playing real people, and although he bears a certain physical resemblance to Clough he avoids the mistake he made when playing Tony Blair in "The Queen", that of trying to imitate his subject too exactly as though he were a Mike Yarwood-style impressionist rather than a dramatic actor. The other excellent contributions come from Colm Meaney as the self-righteous Revie, genuinely unable to understand why anyone might object to his team's playing style, from Jim Broadbent as Longson, a self-important small-town businessman who has attached himself to the town's football club despite an almost total ignorance of the game, and from Timothy Spall as Clough's assistant, Peter Taylor. Unlike Sheen and Meaney, Spall bears very little resemblance to the man he is playing, but as Taylor generally kept a much lower profile than Clough this does not really matter. Taylor, a more substantial figure than most assistant club managers, nevertheless played a key role at Derby, so he is an important character in this drama. He did not follow Clough to Leeds; had he done so, Clough's appointment might have been a greater success.

Despite its international popularity, football has inspired surprisingly few good films, and virtually no great ones. In the 2000s, however, the British cinema managed to produce two very good films about the sport, of which this is the second. (The first was "Bend It like Beckham"). The film's main appeal will, I suspect, be to sports fans and to those with an interest in football history, especially those who, like myself, are old enough to remember the events of the 1970s. Nevertheless, there is enough human drama in "The Damned United" to appeal to film-lovers who have only a passing interest in football. 8/10

The life of the egocentric one gets the big screen treatment - another feather in his cap, and one to put over Shanks, Busby, Mercer, Allison, Paisley etc. The fact he shares the spotlight with Don Revie would be his only disappointment. One may find the numerous anachronisms and inaccuracies distracting, i.e. Dave Mackay had left Derby before Clough and Taylor's resignation, and that 5-0 Leeds triumph came the year after County's championship triumph (or robbery as devout Geldard Enders would maintain) - I know, I was there that great day wallowing in revenge for the previous year's injustices.

Without resorting to caricature, Sheen effortlessly conveys Clough's rampant narcissism and hubris. His obsession with Revie is portrayed as something he needs to work out of his system before getting his life back on keel. Revie is depicted as such a cartoon villain that one is almost disappointed that he doesn't appear clad in top hat and black cloak, chuckling evilly as he twirls his moustache and ties Cloughs' two sons to the railway line. Colm Meaney is uncanny in his depiction of the Elland Road supremo and his face captures the haunted look of the man who must have felt the fates were against him at times. Spall seems physically miscast as Taylor but puts across the fact that Pete was Clough's often unheeded moral conscience - a fact illustrated by how Clough went to the bad in his later years at Forest when Taylor wasn't around. Jim Broadbent is every provincial businessman made good as Sam Longson who must have needed the patience of a saint in his latter years at Derby.

Occasionally, the script's pace works against it. Clough and Taylor have barely signed the contract with Mike Bamber when they're off to Majorca. It might have been better to have a scene or two showing their tribulations at Brighton which increased Clough's desire to snatch at the first decent offer that came his way. I still remember hearing the humiliating defeat they suffered at home to Bristol Rovers on the coach back from Elland Road on the radio - and the ensuing hysterical laughter. To think, one year later, we were laughing the other side of our faces.

I had a few reservations about this film. Firstly we have seen Michael Sheen play a number of real life people in the last couple of years. Would it be possible for Sheen to cast aside these previous roles and play another big well known (in the UK) character in Brian Clough. I also had the distinct feeling that this may be a made for TV film that was bumped up to a theatrical release based on Sheen's recent success. My final reservation was whether the football would look good as it is frequently very poor when played by actors.

I have got to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. The main focus of the film is the relationship between the young pretender in football management Clough and the master in Don Revie the Manager of Leeds United. The film focuses on Clough's short tenure as the manager of Leeds after replacing Revie in 1974. The lead performances by Sheen and Meaney are excellent and it is at least as enthralling as the Frost/Nixon interplay.

It is a perfect film for me as it covers a period when my football passion was at its peak as I was about 10 years old at the time. As for the reservations I had nothing to worry about with Sheen. He transforms into Clough and it is truly a remarkable portrayal. I still tend to think that the film wouldn't lose very much on the small screen. Finally the film cleverly uses real life footage and we see very little of the actors playing football. That's probably just as well as they seemed a little older than the real players were. I'll have to check their bios to confirm that, but Bremner and Clarke looked the wrong side of 40 to me.

I suspect that to get the most out of the film you'll probably need to like football, but if you do you're more or less guaranteed to enjoy it.

I am currently two thirds of the way through the novel. I'm finding it to be a great discovery. Peace's writing has all the energy and pace of Irvine Welsh at his best and having just caught the Red Riding trilogy, he's captured my imagination. What he has truly captured in The Damn United is the true spirit of the 70's and the days when I would watch football dressed in the kit of whatever team I was supporting that week, on my Dad's knee. My Dad loathed Brian 'Bigmouth' / 'Bighead' Clough! But even as a boy I loved him, thought he was hilarious. Reading the novel and seeing the film, we discover a man truly out of time ... more a man / celebrity of the future. The first celebrity football manager? If he'd been a manager in the Britpop era, he'd be a national treasure now ... and may even have been given the England job he so coveted and that the fans longed for him to have. watching Sheen (yet again!) faithfully recreate voice, mannerisms ... inhabiting this character, makes this film (for it is a 'film' in the truly British sense) all the more compelling. Cloughie is complex, sensitive, probably with an inner shyness that he masked outrageously with his outspoken diatribes. He was everywhere when I was a kid ... TV, papers, magazines ... always with a controversial line that makes Noel Gallagher look like he minces his words. The on screen footie from actors is mercifully kept to a minimum, as - as always, actors don't make for convincing footballers. Even the moments from them we do get, they look clueless. But it doesn't detract from the story ... a story of obsessive desire, absolute drive and male relationships, in a time when male bonding usually meant trading a punch or two. This is a good if unfaithful adaptation of the novel. Why in the film do Cloughie and Peter Taylor fall out with a row on the Malaga harbour? In the novel, they trade punches and Cloughie makes a real show of himself ... thus making the reunion all the more difficult. But it's a small gripe. The thing I really took from this was although times have changed for football - when did Man Utd dressing room last have ashtrays??? - essentially, things have changed little. Big star players, vast amounts of money (£150,000 was considered a fortune back then), teams fortunes spinning on their positions in the old division one, the league being dominated by one or four big clubs. And the cheating, and the ref baiting ... little has truly changed.

Good to see a strong Brit-flick that doesn't resort to mockney gangster schlick or the current plethora of cheap horror schlock. This is a character study of depth and resonance. Beautifully, stylistically photographed and wonderfully performed. GO SEE IT!