I would imagine that most sports fanatics, and especially football fans of all descriptions, would have clocked this film many months ago. I, for some inexplicable reason had not, so I had the immense pleasure of viewing this cleverly constructed documentary/drama without the surrounding hype and without any preconceived expectations. If there are any of you out there in the blogsphere who have not yet seen this little gem, I can say without the slightest reservation that in all departments; acting, production and direction, this is a must see film classic.

Personal ambition, ego and psychosis are cleverly woven into the broader themes of 1970’s English football, complete with its violence on and off the field, its decrepit and decaying stadia and the emerging clash between outside money and local traditions. To look at some of the real life footage of the football stadiums in that decade you would be forgiven for thinking this story was situated in some impoverished third world nation. The streets surrounding the stadiums were no better. When the film depicted the household lights going out as a routine part of the electricity power cuts so common in those industrially charged times, it felt that the 1970s had returned for real.

All the dynamics of modern day football were there in their embryonic form. The ongoing clashes between managers and chairman that are so common today was brilliantly portrayed by the clash between Brian Clough and the Derby chairman played masterly by Jim Broadbent. The rivalry and mind games between Clough and Don Revie was as sharp and bitter as anything we witness today between Wenger and Ferguson. The soaring ego of Clough was every bit a match for the towering ego of Mourinho, today’s self styled special one. And the battles between the players, clubs, owners and the prawn sandwich brigades all had, it seems, their genesis in the 1970’s long before the arrival of the Glazers, the Russian Oligarchs and the Arab Sheiks.

The on field violence between the players was graphically portrayed. The crunching of bones could be felt as if we were witnessing live footage. Leeds United were particularly notorious for their on field brutality but they were not alone. Clough claimed he was trying to create a more refined style of football and his later European conquests with Nottingham Forest suggests that his claims were not all bluster. But much of the story revolved not so much about the style of football but of his largely irrational hatred of Revie, a hatred born of a minor slight that he had received in his first encounter with Leeds United.

This all raises a very intriguing question: to what extent are the fortunes of the leading clubs in any sport down to the personalities, both strengths and flaws, of their managers? Is Arsenal’s failure to win silverware in the last six seasons somehow to be found buried in Wenger’s complex personality? Is Man United’s extraordinary run of success in the past twenty years down solely to Ferguson’s maniacal drive, or are there other factors at work? Is Mourinho really a special one or is he nine tenths kidology? What does seem certain about the story of Brian Clough, is that without his long time friend and scout, Peter Taylor, he was unable to conjure the magic formulae that was to bring him his ultimate success with Nottingham Forest.

It is often said that football and film are a poor mix, like oil and water. How could any film match the real life weekly drama that is football? The Damned United disproves that theory, or at the very least, is a notable exception to the rule. A must see film.