David Lacey in the Guardian:
'Brian Clough may not have been the most successful manager in English football but he was surely the most remarkable. Other managers have won more trophies but few have won more loyalty from players or fans or excited the wrath of the game's establishment more often.
Clough's genius for turning ordinary footballers into consistently winning teams will never be equalled. His 28-year career in management stopped short of the millionaires' era, in which players are now deciding a manager's future by their attitudes off the field as well as their performances on it.
The financial polarisation of the game since the onset of first the Premier League, with its huge BSkyB contract, and then the Champions League, with more millions to be earned from television and sponsorship, makes it well-nigh impossible to believe that anyone could now take over two teams from outside the top division and turn them into champions.
Between 1967 and 1980 Clough transformed the East Midlands backwaters of Derby County and Nottingham Forest into footballing mainstreams. At Hartlepool, at 30, he had become the youngest manager in the league when injury cut short his playing career at Sunderland. Within two years of his arrival at the Baseball Ground Derby had won promotion from the former Second Division; another three and they were league champions.
Clough wasted even less time at the City Ground, where promotion in 1977 was followed immediately by first the league title then two successive European Cup triumphs. He strolled through Europe wearing a green top and blue tracksuit trousers, often swinging a squash racket because "y' never know, they might have a court".
This, however, was less than half the story. Clough will be remembered even more for what he was than what he achieved as player and manager.
He may have scored the quickest 200 goals in the English game (219 matches to be precise) but it was the quickness of his tongue that in next to no time earned him national recognition. Clough's became the most mimicked voice in the country. From professional impressionist to public bar wit they were all at it : " 'ey, yoong man ... !" became a catchphrase.
Clough talked a lot of sense articulately. He also talked a load of twaddle, equally articulately. A microphone and especially a television camera unleashed a flow of ideas, criticisms, asides, one-liners and insults. At a time when players and managers tended to talk in strangled clichés - many still do - Clough was a gift to the media and, inevitably, an embarrassment to the authorities.
The impact made by yesterday's news of his death was a tribute to the lasting impression he had, not only on football but on the nation's psyche in a dull decade. People did not always agree with Brian Clough but they always paid attention. So did his players.'