The Damned Utd by David Peace (easy readers txt) 📕

Cup. Now I believe it was just a fraction, just a fraction, Don – I don’t know this because I haven’t spoken to you – but I believe it was just a fraction whether you took the England job or had another shot at the European Cup.’

‘That is totally true,’ says Don. ‘Because I was so involved with the players and everyone at Elland Road …’

‘Good lad,’ I tell him. ‘Now I wanted to do that and I wanted to do it better than you. You can understand that, can’t you?’

‘Yes. But –’

‘Thank you,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you, Don.’

The credits roll, the music plays; I can see clearly now.

* * *

Down the motorway, their fingers and fists, their sticks and their stones, getting smaller and smaller; John at the wheel of my new blue Mercedes, Bill opening another bottle of champagne. But the sun is not shining, rain only falling; the blue sky is black, the yellows all purple, and I’m in the back with my two feet up and their cheque for £25,000 in my hands –

I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in luck. I believe in football –

‘I’ve just come up on the pools,’ I shout. ‘The bloody pools!’

I believe in family and I believe in me; Brian Howard Clough –

It is Thursday 12 September 1974, and I wish you were here.

The Argument II, cont.

In May 1979

Margaret Hilda Thatcher and the Conservative Party won

the General Election,

and Brian Howard Clough and Nottingham Forest won

the European Cup –

No Milton. No Blake. No Orwell –

D.U.F.C.

Sources and Acknowledgements

This novel is another fiction, based on another fact. That fact was found in the following sources:

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow (1960).

Biting Talk by Norman Hunter (2004).

Bremner! by Bernard Bale (1998).

Champions Again: Derby County 1967/75 by Gerald Mortimer (1975).

Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry by B. S. Johnson (1973).

Clough: A Biography by Tony Francis (1987).

Clough: The Autobiography by Brian Clough (1994).

Cloughie: Walking on Water by Brian Clough (2002, 2003).

Derby County: The Clough Years by Michael Cockayne (2003).

Don Revie: Portrait of a Footballing Enigma by Andrew Mourant (1990).

Hard Man, Hard Knocks by Terry Yorath (2004).

His Way: The Brian Clough Story by Patrick Murphy (1993).

In a League of their Own by Jeremy Novick (1995).

Leeds United Match Day Magazine and Programmes, 1974–75.

Marching on Together by Eddie Gray (2002).

Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy (1976).

Peter Lorimer: Leeds and Scotland Hero by Peter Lorimer and Phil Rostron (2002).

Psycho Mike and the Phantom Ice Rink by Don Watson.

Room at the Top by John Braine (1957).

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe (1958).

Selected Poems by Tony Harrison (1984).

Sniffer: The Life and Times of Allan Clarke by David Saffer (2001).

The Elland Road Encyclopaedia by Paul Harrison (1994).

The Football Managers by Johnny Rogan (1989).

The Glory Game by Hunter Davies (2001 edition).

The Goalkeeper’s Revenge by Bill Naughton (1961).

The Ice Age by Margaret Drabble (1977).

The Leeds United Story by Martin Jarred and Malcolm Macdonald (2002).

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe (1959).

The Official FA Year Books, 1966–76.

The Real Mackay by Dave Mackay and Martin Knight (2004).

The Unforgiven: Don Revie’s Leeds United by Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson (2002).

The Yorkshire Post, July–September 1974.

There Was Some Football Too … 100 Years of Derby County by Tony Francis (1984).

This Sporting Life by David Storey (1960).

Welcome to Elland Road: LUFC in Pictures by John and Andrew Varley (1999).

Winning Isn’t Everything: A Biography of Sir Alf Ramsey by Dave Bower (1998).

With Clough by Peter Taylor (1980).

I would like to thank the following people for their assistance and their support: Mrs Scriven and the staff of the Balne Lane Library, Wakefield; Andrew Vine and David Clay at the Yorkshire Post; Sarn Warbis and Richard Hall; François Guérif, Agnès Guery, Daniel Lemoine and all the staff of Payot & Rivages, Paris; Luca Formenton, Marco Tropea, Cristina Ricotti and all the staff of il Saggiatore, Milan; Shunichiro Nagashima; Kester Aspden, Andy Beckett, Gordon Burn, Giuseppe Genna, Peter Hobbs, Eoin McNamee, David Mitchell, Justin Quirk, Ian Rankin, Cathi Unsworth, Martyn Waites, and Tony White; William Miller, Junzo Sawa, Hamish Macaskill, Peter Thompson and all the staff of the English Agency Japan; Stephen Page, Lee Roy Brackstone, Angus Derby Cargill, Anna Pallai, Ian Bahrami and Kate Ward and all the staff of Faber and Faber Limited. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, in Britain and Japan, and particularly my father, Basil Peace.

By the Same Author

NINETEEN SEVENTY FOUR

NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN

NINETEEN EIGHTY

NINETEEN EIGHTY THREE

GB84

About the Author

David Peace is the author of The Red Riding Quartet and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. In 2004 he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel GB84. Tokyo Year Zero, the first book of his Tokyo Trilogy, was published in 2007. He lives in Tokyo with his wife and two children.

Further Praise for The Damned United:

‘The strangest, most compelling football novel ever written.’ Nick Rennison, Sunday Times

‘An extraordinarily gripping portrait of Brian Clough at his peak, it is surely the best football book ever written.’ Dominic Sandbrook, Books of the Year, Evening Standard

‘Incomparable … a brilliant novel … Peace’s work might be fiction, but its reading of the paranoia, incompetence and venality at large in football’s corridors of power is almost painful in its accuracy.’ Jim White, Books of the Year, Daily Telegraph

‘The most compelling football book of 2006 … Shakespearean in its scale, ambition, depth and elements of tragedy, farce and betrayal.’ Phil Shaw, Books of the Year, Independent

‘Now this, young man, is what you call an exceptional football book, as bold, brilliant and unconventional as Brian Clough himself, whose voice is vividly brought