Date:
4th August 1999
Time:
11:00
Location:
The City Ground
Interviewers:
Steve Ralling; Kev Lockhart; Stanno

Steve:   Right, moving on to our favourite subject – Forest. The appointment of David Platt, to a lot of fans out there somewhat came out of the blue, with all the talk of O’Neil, Evans, Little and all of the other ones. Was it a very cleverly kept secret or was it as big a surprise to everyone in the club as it was to us?

Larry:   Well, I can talk about me, and it was an absolute complete surprise to me because I thought that Martin was going to get it. He was the fans choice, lets put it that way, and all the supporters including me thought that with what we read in the press and so on that Martin O’Neil was the one.

Steve:   Yeah, you’ve only got to witness the Leicester game, “Martin’s coming home”, “O’Neil is a forest fan”, you know...

Larry:   I had a drink with Robbo after that game. I’d been sat up in here doing my commentary and I kept an eye on Robbo and Martin and Martin is very animated as well you know when he’s on the touchline.  That game he didn’t get out till 10 minutes before the end of the game. I asked Robbo about that and he said he wondered if I’d noticed that. I said yeah I noticed that, probably everyone else noticed that he didn’t get out jumping around the touchline, he said yeah, Martin didn’t want to upset the Forest fans, because Martin had obviously read in the papers that Forest were interested in him.  I think at one stage he might have fancied it, but I don’t think there was ever an official approach for Martin to come to Forest.

But you’re quite right; going back to the David Platt thing I was very surprised.

Steve:   He just wasn’t in the frame was he?

Larry:   No, he wasn’t. But you know, you ask the question was it a surprise, yes to me. But on the morning of David Platt’s appointment I was in the reception area at the ground and Nigel Doughty was there.  Nobody knew who he was.  Now I know Nigel Doughty from 2½ years ago when the original takeover was on and you know, he just looked lost, none of the reception girls knew him or anything and I knew what was going on about his investment and blah blah blah, so I said Nigel lets go and have a cup of coffee, so he said thank Christ someone’s rescued me.

Anyway we sat down there in the Robin Hood Suite and had a cup of coffee and this was the morning of the press conference with David Platt.  So I said to him, Nigel, where did this come from,  Martin O’Neil, yes, Roy Evans, yes maybe even Brian Little, all those names bandied about.  I said where did Platt come from?  He looked in his briefcase and he got out this file and I’m telling you, it was not put together that morning, it had every goal he’s scored, it had pictures of him scoring goals, it had comments from him in Italian papers and it looked as though there was a file built up for quite some while. I looked at him and said you’ve been targeting this guy for quite a while, haven’t you? He said, don’t believe all you read in the papers.  But the Martin O’Neil thing was a definite thing, they did fancy him but I think there were a lot of red herrings being thrown about at the time.

Steve:   Oh yeah, it kept us busy I mean the internet was alive with rumours, everyday it was ‘its not him, its him’ and we had everybody thrown in, I mean even your name was in there.

Larry:   That was me starting that one, “its Larry Lloyd”.  So yeah, it was a surprise but again not to the boys that counted, Doughty in particular, he was worked on I’m sure of that.

Stanno:  One thing that surprised me was that there was all this fuss about Martin O’Neil being the fans favourite, there was a poll on the Internet and he only came third.

Larry:   Did he?  Stuart Pearce was favourite?

Stanno:  No, Roy Evans topped the poll.

Larry:   You know Roy’s a pal of mine anyway, and I was hoping that Roy would get the job because Roy and I grew up together at Liverpool but as you know he didn’t get it for whatever reason.

Stanno:  It certainly came across in the press that Nigel Doughty didn’t want Roy Evans.

Larry:     That’s right, but I don’t know. I read that piece in the evening post, but he was absolutely, you know, he wanted a big name and he got one.

Stanno:  Big name but not a big name manager?

Larry:     Well that’s the next thing, you know I had a ‘phone call last night on my show, a boy having a pop at me, he said “hey what do you think now when we were all saying Stuart Pearce and you were saying that it needs a manager of experience to sort out the mess.”  Yeah well I always used to say that all the time, and I said well yes I did say that, I can’t deny that, but I’m not the man who makes the decisions and what I’ve seen and as I do, I rattle on, in a roundabout way, and I confuse them, I confuse myself.

Steve:   I think that what it is about Platt is that we’re giving him his big chance and he's going to be able to show the world what he can do.

Larry:   The word in football, the better judges than me, is that he’s gonna be a top class manager. You know he is a novice so far as actually running a club, but he’s gone about it the right way by traveling the world and watching top coaches, watching top managers and he’s learned a lot.  As opposed to Stuart Pearce, who everyone was pushing at me, and pushing all the time.  Stop play, and manage.  You know Platt has done some preparation.

Stanno:  You must have had a lot of contact with him since he’s been here, have you been impressed with what he’s done?

Larry:    Tremendous, you know because I don’t know the lad, none of us do. We’d known him by watching him play for England and Arsenal at times, Italy and all that but none of us knew him personally, certainly I didn’t.  Since he’s arrived I’ve had a couple of chats with him, I’ve had a cup of coffee with him and like ex-player to ex-player you know, just talking football talk and I’ve been very impressed, very impressed.  One or two things have happened in here that needed a firm hand and he’s come down with a firm hand.

Steve:   Like Carlton Palmer.

Larry:   Like the Carlton thing, you know I think that shook everyone because David Platt comes across as a very nice man but what I have found out about him is that he’s got this hard streak and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly and if anyone wants a slap I think he’d deliver that slap.

Steve:   Shame we hadn’t got him around when Pierre was having his strop then.

Larry:   Well there you go, you know it’s early days, it’s only been a month or so.  At the moment I feel pretty confident that he’s going to do the job but you know everybody can talk a good game, I talk a good game, but you supporters will only judge me or judge David Platt on the first three, four, six games.  If we lose all six f#@*ing hell! To put it all in a nutshell he will be judged on results as everyone is.

Kev:      I think he ought to get longer than 6 games, let him get into it.

Larry:   Does anybody smoke?

Everyone:  No, you’re alright.

Larry:    You’re all intelligent.

Kev:       No, I’m not, I smoke.

Larry:    You want one.

Kev:       No, you’re alright thanks.

Steve:   What! (speaks to dictaphone) "Kev turns down a fag from Larry Lloyd!"

Larry:   Larry Lloyd wouldn’t turn a fag down from Kev.

Kev:      I forgot to call in at the newsagents so I can’t reciprocate.

Larry:   Don’t worry about that, have one if you want one.

Kev gratefully accepts a fag from Larry Lloyd.

Stanno: Talking about the management team, I mean I was really surprised with the appointment of Dennis Booth but then we were all thinking, who is he, where is he from, who is he, never heard of him then we delved into it a little bit more, now we know where he’s come from and what we think the association with David Platt is, obviously Aston Villa.

Larry:     Well that’s how it works in football you see, its like the situation at Leicester with Martin O’Neill and John Robertson I mean there was Martin, Robbo, myself John O’Hare, there's about 4 or 5 of us used to be together all the time, Frank Gray was in that as well, you know those two have been friends, I think Martin came, no Robbo was already here when Martin came over from Ireland in about 1971 and they remained like that all the time so going back to it, sometimes its not what you know its who you know, that applies to any walk of life doesn’t it and I think the case is the same here with David Platt, he knows Dennis Booth and can trust him and when you come into a club cold you need people around you you can trust and that now spreads to the players, now he knows the Italian three, and we don’t, but David Platt does and he thinks I can trust these three to come and do a job for me.  And that’s how it works and that’s the Dennis Booth connection.  At first of course David wanted Stuart Gray if you remember, the former player, he’s the Assistant Manager at Southampton, they are the greatest of buddies and Stuart’s got a good name as a coach, but then he got Dennis Booth.  That’s the connection, its just, you know, he played with him, they struck up a friendship and he could trust him.

Stanno:   Yeah, they seem to have a very good rapport because I’ve been down the training ground a couple of times and taken a few photographs for the web site and Dennis don’t half bark his orders out.

Larry:     Well what I’ve found with him, I’ve not been down on the training ground yet but I’ve had a couple of dealings with Dennis and he’s got the humour of the two, okay he might bark it out down there.

For instance I went in the dressing room the other day and there was a couple of young boys, a couple of YTS lads, they’re not called YTS anymore are they, they’re called students or something like that. Anyway, I was just in the corridor and Boothy sort of bounced off of me and he said ‘f#@*ing hell that’s the closest I’ve ever got to you. When we played against you I used to say keep away from those two animals Lloydy and Burnsy, don’t go near them.’  He turned and said to these kids, ‘don’t f#@*ing go near him, he’ll eat you.  I went, yes you’re right Dennis you didn’t come near us did you. You weren’t f#@*ing good enough.

Steve:   That actually leads us to one of our other questions because on one of the other football sites, that’s more of a general site, a site called Football 365, they put a questionnaire out for everybody on the internet saying for your particular team who was the hardest man ever so for Forest they put forward suggestions of Pearce, (Larry: ‘he would have got a lot’) so guess who came out on top?

Larry:    Don’t tell me the name yet but it’s someone I wouldn’t get then or its someone that surprises you.

Steve et al:    Not really, no surprises as long time Forest fans.

Larry:     A long time, so it’s going way back then.  I would put Kenny very near the top.

Steve:     Somebody very close to Kenny

Larry:     Scottish?

Steve:     No. Who used to play alongside Kenny. 

Larry:     What, me?. 

Steve:     You actually came out on top as the hardest Forest player ever.

Larry:     I wasn’t that hard I was just clumsy at times.

Steve:   Well people were quoting things like the time you gave Peter Osgood a 'kiss'!

Larry:    Yeah, remember the old Trent End mist, about as high as that glass now wasn’t it (Larry points at the hospitality suite in the Trent End), hey thinking back just digressing a bit, that game got us promotion you know, you think back we were losing that game and being well pissed on, we were losing that game 1-0 and the fog came over and the referee abandoned it at 1-0 but when we got the replay here we pissed all over them, won it by about 3-1 or something had we lost that game then we wouldn’t have gone up so the fog did us a big favour. 

But that thing with Ozzie though, I saw this fog coming up, we were attacking that end I thought come on you bastard come over here, I mean the referee was down there somewhere, linesman was lost down there, Ozzie come here, wallop, landed him one, bastard, he had a go at me, he said ‘f#@*ing hell what’s going on?' I said, that’s for all the years I was at Liverpool and you were with Chelsea trying to break my leg, because he was a dirty bastard. I said, you tried to break my f#@*ing leg 20 times. But half the crowd saw it and worse, Cloughie saw it and it cost me £200 quid.

Steve:   Which in those days was probably a fair bit wasn’t it, what would that be then a weeks wages?

Larry:   Well, that was before promotion wasn’t it, yeah, I suppose it would have been about a weeks wages.   When I came here and we used to talk about it a lot, Martin, Robbo and me, I came here on £180 a week and when they found out they went apeshit, John Robertson was the worst and the Martin O’Neil’s and the Viv Anderson’s, the lads that were here, they were on £80 a week and because I had come from first division sides, you know Coventry and Liverpool before that, I was on decent money for those days, oh they went apeshit, I was on twice as much as them.  Mind you, they soon caught up.

Steve:   That leads us on to yet another subject of players wages, I mean it’s taking the piss nowadays.  Do you think that capping is a good idea?

Larry:    Well I’ve often said that its difficult to know how this will work, for instance capping per the individual I don’t think would work because you ought to cap the club and let them work out their own budget, for instance you could tell the Premiership or First Division Club, your wage bill is not going to top £6million so work it out yourself. So one player might be earning £1million and one might be earning £100K for a year, and something like that perhaps has got to happen, I keep asking this on the ‘phone-in, what does enough mean? The word enough, I mean 40 grand a week, you can’t spend it.

Stanno:   What about Suker at Arsenal though?

Larry:     Well he’s agreed to take half his wages you know, if you look at it without taking the figure 20 grand, you think would I move for half my wages? I don’t think so.  But the money in football has gone mad.

Steve:   But in a way they’re  victims of their own success as well, aren’t they, its one feeding off another.

Larry:   Well yeah, that is why you know, someone asked me last night why is it all one way traffic at the moment foreigners coming to this country and none of ours going abroad, I said its simple, their demands are too high, I mean we’ve got 3 internationals coming here well within the Forest wage structure and we’re only a First Division Club.  If David Platt tried to sign 3 internationals, English, well he wouldn’t get them.  Around age of late 20’s you couldn’t afford them. That’s as well as a lot of foreigners in the game, which I don’t agree with. On the finance side, people like Gordon Taylor, you know the Chairman of the PFA, he’s got to get his house in order with the players, and the agents.  I mean you’ve got the agents, they see a quick buck, you know a player will sign a 4 year contract and after 12 months he’ll say to that player hey I’ve had a word with so and so, he fancies you, its like with Jimmy Hasselbaink, they fancy you, and the agents thinking I’ll get 100 grand myself out of this.

Stanno:   Its interesting to see the paper today, he’s threatening to do a Pierre.

Larry:    I know, I tell you what one of the most sensible things Dave Bassett said, if you remember about this time last year maybe a bit later, he said, when Pierre was on strike, “Why don’t everybody get together and all the premiership clubs give, or loan, Forest 200 grand each, or maybe some sort of slush fund with 100 grand a year each, so should this happen they say well if PVH is valued at £4 million, we’ve got £4 million to lend you until the player is sold or whatever or until you can afford to pay the money back and leave the bastard to rot for 3 years.

Stanno:    Would have been great. the down side of that being why should the other strugglers in the premiership loan us the money.

Larry:      That’s right, the likes of Man United wouldn’t have been bothered but the Coventrys – in fact Gordon Strachan came out in support of that - but the likes of Southampton, they wouldn’t have been impressed with that but it might happen to them one day.  I mean that is a way of stopping this, let the bastards rot, who the hell do they think they are.  I mean Hasselbaink is a good player but…….

Stanno:     I was hoping that the outcome was going to be the one who had the example made out of him was Anelka, I mean Arsenal could have afforded it, they could have stuck him in the reserves.

Larry:      That would have been super, but you say that and you’re probably right. They’re one of the richest clubs around but when, back to the Pierre thing, I mean he’s an asset of £4 million sat on his dutch arse and £4 million to Forest is a hell of a lot. So to Arsenal theres an asset there of £22 million sat on his arse, Anelka, you know you think oh shit, we could sell him for £20 mill, do we let him sit on his arse, you know what I mean.

Kev:          Do you think Arsenal were wrong to have asked so much money for him in the first place then, I mean they only paid 500 grand for him.

Larry:       Well I mean there is a case to be made for that, some people might accuse Arsenal of being greedy but if they’ve asked £20 million and they’ve got it, they’re not wrong. Somebody else obviously thinks Anelka’s worth that.  You know a player is only worth what somebody is going to pay for him and obviously the Gunners felt that £20 million was a good price for him, I don’t but there you go, its not my business.

Stanno:      So players, money and striking players all leads on to the 50 grand Pierre wants as part of his loyalty bonus.  We all deserve one I think, we were here all season, which is more than he was.

Larry:        What I am led to believe is that he had 2 years left and it was sort of £100 grand at the start of each season as a sort of signing on fee, okay, I have no qualms with that because he could have said at the beginning of that contract I’ll have the whole lot in one, but to help you out I’ll spread it I’ll have £100 grand at the start of each season so I have no worries about that because as I said when he first signed he could have said right we’ve agreed a £500 grand signing on, gimme the cheque now, but to help Forest I’ll spread the payment, it helps me with my tax but it also helps you as well.  But when he gets £300 grand, quite right, the club said we’ve no problem with that, that’s yours anyway, but the rest, adding up the  £750 grand loyalty bonus, f#@*ing hell.  He didn’t show much loyalty, do you know the meaning of the word loyalty, well you didn’t show much, sorry get out, I sounded like Clough there didn’t I.

Steve:       I’m going to say, if there’s any loyalty payments going, we want some, for sticking it all last season game in game out, fair weather or foul!!

Larry:       Absolutely, the fans in fact were very, very good last season, as you know I haven’t missed a game home or away for, well you could count the ones I have missed in the last 10 years on the fingers of one hand.  I expected shit, you know the way it turned out last season, they were brilliant away from home, I couldn’t fault them. At home, I’m sat there and I think, they’re going to start any minute, watching this crap out there, we kept looking away to A block thinking they’re going to start in a minute but they didn’t just a little bit towards the board wasn’t it. 

The fans here have been very, very good and you know its not our fault, they can hear when I say they deserve a bit more now.

Steve:     Well I think we’ve seen that with a bit of a reduction in the prices. 

Larry:    Again, I mentioned that on the show last night, I think Forest have gone about it so far so good in the right way, you know immediately prices went down, now if you remember last time we went down the prices went up.

Steve:    So we thought they couldn’t use that one again, telling us they’re going to rebuild for the Premiership.

Larry:    So now the prices are reduced, the take-over by Nigel Doughty, he’s a forest fan his seat’s up there (Larry Points across to the Exec stand).

Steve:    Can we talk about the prices a bit more?  Okay everybody welcomes the drop in prices but from our point of view, we were up there (points to upper Trent End) last year and we were given a £10 reduction in cost and we’re thinking that’s not a lot, so we’ve all moved up that end now (Pinnacle Place) and saved over a £100 quid each, now we’ve got a discount but we’ve had to work it ourselves. It would have been nice to keep our old seats but look at the price difference.  Its virtually the same view as last year and we’re saving over £100.

Larry:    You’re not going to tell me that’s a bad view from there, even if you’re not where you were.

Steve:    But the acoustics are so much better as well, we can make a hell of a lot more noise than we could at this end.

Kev:        One of my theories is it was deliberate, to try and move people up there to try and get an atmosphere above the away fans. Or was that just a spot someone insisted on?

Larry:      There’s been so much controversy over that move to put the away supporters down there, and between the police and the safety officer, they decided that it would be safer if they were all in there, safer in the respect that they could park their buses out there, they’ve got their own toilets, their own bar, you know they’re not mixing and it’s safer for everyone, that’s the official line.

Steve:      Its just the acoustics are so much better there, I mean 3000 away fans can out-sing the rest of the ground just from being in that little area.

Larry:      I keep going on about that, I wish they’d make a lot more noise.

Steve:   We do though, we’re screaming our heads off its just that you can’t hear us. It’s just not being funneled across the pitch.  Are there any plans to join the Exec and the Trent End up?

Larry:      I wouldn’t have thought so, probably this stand (main stand) when eventually this goes up a tier, I think they’ll probably have to knock the whole thing down myself but there is a thing that if you have it totally closed in the air can’t swish across the pitch but then you’ll say, what about Middlesbrough? What about Pride Park?

Kev:          Yeh, but we went up to old Trafford last season for the Worthington Cup and the pitch there was shite. Great stadium, but the pitch was real shite, they pulled it up a few days later.

Larry:       It’s a bloody massive stand now isn’t it? 

I don’t think there’s any plans to close it in here, unless they do it when this gets done, it would be nice.  If you look across from where you sit its not as impressive as when you’re  looking this way.

Kev:          And it’s called the Main stand.

Larry:       I’ve never sat anywhere but here and I think great ground, you know and its still called the Main stand you’re right, so when you’re sat looking at it you think, f#@*ing hell its not that impressive.

Kev:           It used to be though, I can remember as a kid, as a 9 year old when they rebuilt this after the fire, and I mean the rest of the ground was just open, the Bridgford end was just open, then you had the cow shed at the Trent End, it was impressive 30 years ago.

Larry:         I think its, you know this morning a couple of the Italians came and stood out here talking to the groundsmen.  You could see them looking around, I don’t know what they were saying but you could see them nodding at each other, they were quite impressed.

Stanno:        Just because you’ve touched on it, I know you want to go on and answer these but you said obviously you didn’t know what they were saying, one of my questions was going to be what we’ve always lacked is a talker at the back so we’re going to have a couple of Italians and Norwegian, do they speak any English or what?

Larry:          Well no, they’ve got nothing yet, they haven’t got thank you or please or hello or anything so I believe they just sit there and say nothing.

Steve:          Well hopefully the football will speak for them.

Larry:          Well it’s a universal language isn’t it but we do need a leader and we’ve not had one, Chett bless him you know I think the world of Chett but he’s not a leader.

Steve:         He’s got Forest in his blood but unfortunately he’s not leadership material.

Larry:          I mean Pearce was a great leader, going back we had leaders back in our day I mean McGovern was captain but Burnsy, me and Archie Gemmill used to do a lot of shouting but we’ve not had one here for a while.

Steve:         That’s why we were thinking Carlton Palmer might take on the mantle this year but now it looks like he’s on his way.  I mean I think he would have made a good captain; he was certainly doing a lot more shouting.  Stanno was saying at the training ground he was the one going round giving all the encouragement, not Chetts.  Chetts is like an honourary captain but I don’t think he’s a playing captain.

Larry:          He’s a bit like McGovern, you know he said very little, he just led us out and tossed up and job done.  He rarely said anything in our day you know Burnsy and like two or three of us were shouting all the time.

Steve:         Well that brings us on to another question then, what is the role of a captain in a team nowadays?

Larry:          My own personal thoughts is that its an honour, you know I’ve captained Forest, I’ve captained England under 23’s as it was in those days.  It’s a great honour to lead your side out but there it ends because when you come out for your warm up for instance you look at the conditions, which way the wind blowing, is the sun just over the stand, you know.  The goalie is saying get the sun at my back if you win the toss then by the second half it will have gone down.  So you all have a say, you know and Cloughy used to say, and I firmly believed it, that take the elements in the first half, for instance if there’s a gale blowing towards the Bridgford end, kick that way first.  Sod that they say the lucky end is to kick that way, whatever, but take the elements first, go 5-0 up and then the rest will look after itself.  So that type of thing gets discussed in there anyway.  So, captain’s role, you know a bit of a leader off the field if you like, for instance my job here is to get players out and about, which is hard in itself so I always go to Chett and Chett does command respect in there and I say Chett I need someone to go to Beeston Branch and do this, who wants to go.  Tank, you haven’t been anywhere for a while, you go and sort that out.  So off the field I think there is a role providing the boys respect him and the boys look up to him, which they do with Chett.  On the field, I don’t think there’s much of a role at all. 

Steve:         So really it’s down to individual players to command their area of the field.

Larry:         That’s right, you know your job.  I mean its important for managers – I had 4 years at management – and it interested me that article with John Barnes, you know he’s started well at Celtic. There’s not a player that goes onto that field that doesn’t know his job, foreign, English, Scottish or what, they know their job and if you know your job then you don’t need a captain saying eh, move down there, you know your job, you know where you should be, at this level anyway.

Steve:         I think it would be good to have somebody like Pearce back.  I don’t know if you know this but at Chett’s testimonial, if you didn’t know it was Chetts’ testimonial you would have thought it was Pearce’s, every time he kicked the ball – huge cheer.  What a personality.  He came on the pitch and the first thing he did is he drew out an area on the pitch and he said that’s mine and everybody was right behind him, I mean poor old Chetts everyone must have thought it was Pearce’s night.

Larry:         Chetts wouldn’t have been too upset with that because Pearce probably put 1000 on the gate without a doubt.   The thing with Stuart Pearce is he’s brilliant, what he’s done for this club over the years is brilliant.  

Stanno:        Do you think he’s too big a personality for Forest now, do you think Platt thinks he would be more popular than him if he came here now.

Larry:         It could well be, I don’ know.  It could well be a bit of that.  If he had been appointed as some sort of a player coach to see if he could still play.

Steve:         I don’t think there’s a person here who wouldn’t want that.

Larry:         You’d probably have put about 5000 on the season tickets easily.  You know there was that school of thought, Pearce; he certainly would put bums on seats.

Steve:         It would have helped with the atmosphere, you know after last year everybody is on a bit of a downer and if Pearce was back he’d get the old blood on fire again wouldn’t he.

Larry:         But again, you know, what they’ve done here and Nigel Doughty has often said we’ll look after that side, anything this side of the car park David Platt’s in charge of.  Now it goes back to your question about Dennis Booth, he doesn’t know Stuart Pearce and rumour has it that they didn’t really get on when they were both with the England squad.  So its Platt’s decision who to bring in and he picked Dennis Booth; simple as that.  Nobody’s saying that Stuart Pearce cannot do the job but David Platt’s in charge from this side of the car park and anything that happens here is his decision. And Doughty you know,  he’d tell you himself, he’s a fan, he used to get going when Pearce started but he say’s I can’t do anything about it.  He can’t say to David Platt have Stuart Pearce as your assistant.

Steve:         But there are some clubs that do that.  Unfortunately we’re not.

Larry:         You know when I first went for a management job at Wigan when I left here, the chairman said look, we’ve got this lad here, I want to look after him, you need someone to help so yeah, I took him on and all he did was stab me in the f#@*ing back and I ended up sacking him.  So that is why, certainly at this club, the likes of Nigel Doughty, Eric Barnes, they don’t interfere.  The only time they’d interfere with David Platt is if he isn’t doing the job, then they’d sack him.  And I’ve got to add, that’s how it should be. 

Steve:          It nice to see the new Brian Clough stand, at last showing recognition of the promise back in 1997 when they took over.

Larry:          I am a bit disappointed that there was no room made for Peter Taylor.

Steve:          That was going to be my next question.

Larry:          Because I was here in Taylor and Clough’s glory days, I mean I was one of the players and people, certainly the players and anyone who worked with the pair of them realize this, how important Peter Taylor was to Brian Clough.  And I am a little bit surprised that they haven’t found room somewhere for the name of Peter Taylor because he played a massive part in those days.  Its great, I mean take nothing away from the gaffer, take nothing away from him having that stand named after him, but just a little corner for Peter would have been nice.  The thing with the 36 boxes has been put on the back burner.  All those 36 boxes were going to be named after all of us, I was included in the 36 of Nottingham Forest’s greatest ever and we were all going to have a box named after us but I believe that’s been put on the back burner now for some reason and Taylor was going to have something named after him, I think one of the hospitality rooms.


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