On Days Like These: The Incredible Autobiography of a Football Legend

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There are some nice stories in here, but I would have liked to hear more about what Clough was like or what life was like in Glasgow, but he focuses on what happened on the pitch, which is fine.

O’Neill’s memories of a “mesmeric” Clough remain vivid, from the moment of their initial meeting in the winter of 1975. Clough instantly promoted O’Neill to the first team but was not of a mind to fawn. “Hey, you: Stop putting your mate in the shit. You look like a boy who would put your mate in the shit,” was the message in an early training session. For a complicated man, he played a very simple game. He was as good at tactics as anybody but that’s not how he is considered. He is considered a motivator, a shouter or a charmer. He knew the game inside out. He told us things tactically during games that stood the test of time. He would say something to you on a Monday, contradict himself on a Friday and you would believe both.” Martin O'Neill: Forget the hardman persona, Roy Keane is articulate, self-deprecating and knows his footballThere are already murmurings in the Republic of Ireland about Martin O’Neill’s autobiography. On Days Like These, which charts five decades in football, signs off with a withering take-down of Keith Andrews, Stephen Kenny’s assistant with Ireland. “Stephen’s lieutenant finds himself in a hotter seat in the dugout than the one he occupied in a TV studio when he was an excoriating critic of mine,” O’Neill writes. As a manager, O'Neill's celebrated leadership of Celtic saw them win seven trophies, including three Scottish Premier League titles; and in England he successfully led Leicester City to two League Cups and Aston Villa to an unprecedented three consecutive top six Premier League finishes. He oversaw the Republic of Ireland reaching the Euros in 2016, when they made it to the second round for the first time in their history.

Martin O’Neill has had one of the most incredible careers in football – winning European Cups, captaining his country at a world cup, and decades as a hugely successful manager. On Days Like These tells his fascinating story in his own words for the first time. Nottingham Forest made history at home and abroad without those involved ever knowing how fabled their run was. “You were on this ride,” O’Neill says. “You are going to West Ham and expecting to win, whereas the previous year trying to beat Bristol Rovers was a struggle. I don’t think we realised it was special until it was over. The night we lost to the Bulgarians [CSKA Sofia in 1980] in the European Cup, you thought: ‘Wow, that’s it.’

He takes as much care telling the story of his period as manager of Wycombe Wanderers as he does his much more heralded spells in charge of Leicester City and Aston Villa. Martin O’Neill has delivered a sublime and superb book that is honest, insightful, funny and detailed. What jars in relation to Andrews is his position within O’Neill’s profession. “If Roy Keane was doing punditry work and said I’d made a mess of something, I might disagree but I would accept it from someone who has played at that level, has managed himself and knows the pressures you are under,” O’Neill says. “I have a level of earned respect for that opinion but not a lower-leaguer who wouldn’t know what it is like to win a medal. And who is now finding how difficult it is to win football matches.