Richard Herring, who was responsible (with Kermode and Mayo) for the first podcasts I listened to, is stopping his regular podcasts from the end of the year.
9 May 2023
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The RHLSTP ones?
Didn't his cancer come back worse than before?
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Yes and I believe so.
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Oh good, Birtles is back.
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He was fine
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Probably no worse than Carr on that occasion. Mostly kept his go tos in check - don’t think there was much about what Clough used to say and only one mention of his ManU transfer.
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That's a kind recall. I'm fifteen minutes in and he's already mentioned "When I was at Man Utd" twice and a Brian Clough quote of "Don't make a good chance better".
Funny how he says to Matt "I've only been on once this season, I thought you'd bombed me out" qué nervous laughter from Matt Davies who definitely has reduced Birtles appearances due to feedback.
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Maybe my brain has got better at quasi muting those tropes.
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His talk about turning his time at Man U around was pretty good. I remembered it as a disaster but he got 1 in 3 in his second season before coming home.
But I do acknowledge that I generally like him more than most. -
The thing I learned recently is that he forced the move after Clough wouldn’t allow him a proper holiday in the summer of 1980. (He was in the England squad for the euros that year.) Imagine how he’d react to that sort of insubordination from a modern player.
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Ok. I like him a little less then. Assuming true.
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It's covered in the (very good) three part "It was what it was" podcast deep dive into Forest's glory years. Jonathan Wilson wrote a good clough biography, so he's definitely done the research and, it seems, most of it played out through the Evening Post at the time.
To be honest, Clough was the one who sounded unreasonable. Birtles played 64 games for Forest in 79/80 and then went to Italy with England for the euros, he wanted a two week holiday before reporting back for pre-season and Clough said he couldn't have it.
