My name is Daniel Taylor and I\u2019m the Senior Football Writer for The Athletic, the sports media app\/website owned by the New York Times – and, before that, the chief football writer for the Guardian.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also a home-and-away Forest fan for more years than I can even remember. I was too young for the proper glory years (though it didn\u2019t stop me writing I Believe in Miracles) but old enough to remember Cloughie\u2019s magic, Frank Clark\u2019s European tours, Stan Collymore, Lars Bohinen, Bryan Roy \u2026 and then, of course, the wilderness years.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a huge part of my life. Relationships have been lost, bank balances shredded, passports stamped. I\u2019m now living in Manchester where I have to ask for a barm cake – for fuck\u2019s sake \u2013 rather than a cob and my son was brainwashed a long time ago to ignore City and United, Champions League glories and all that razzamatazz for a life of Mull of Kintrye. He tells me he’s happy but, frankly, he has no choice.<\/p>\n
How did your career in journalism begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n Straight from school at the Newark and South Notts Advertiser, my local paper. I was lucky on two fronts.<\/p>\n First, my mum came through one day and chucked that week’s Advertiser at me. It was 2pm, if I remember correctly, and I was in bed, which probably tells you a lot about my life at the age of 18. She had seen an advert for a \u2018club reporter\u2019 in the job pages \u2013 perfect!<\/p>\n And, secondly, it turned out the sports editor, Don Wright, was a big Forest fan. His eyes lit up when I mentioned Forest in my job interview and that was my first big break because, out of the 80 or so job applicants, I doubt I had the best grades. I\u2019d back myself for writing ability, news sense etc etc, but Don didn\u2019t know that at the time.<\/p>\n He went on to become Forest\u2019s historian and I always tell him that, if it wasn\u2019t for our shared love of Forest, God knows where I would have ended up. I think me and my mates were \u2018door knocking\u2019 at the time, ie bunking off school to sell dusters and washing-up liquid (the shame) in Coventry, Nuneaton, and all these weird places, then spending all the money we earned on going out: Venus, Madchester, Flowered Up \u2026 and, of course, wherever Forest were playing. Good times. But, yeah, thank you, Don, I owe you a lot.<\/p>\n How did you get your breakthrough moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n It helped that when I applied for a job in Manchester, for a\u00a0 freelance press agency called Teamwork, they gave me a trial game \u2013 Sheffield United v Port Vale \u2013 and it just so happened that, an hour or so after the match, the pissed-up dad of Dane Whitehouse stormed on to the Port Vale bus to try to throttle Gareth Ainsworth.<\/p>\n Whitehouse had been seriously hurt the previous year in a tackle with Ainsworth. His dad had been stewing on it in the pub and decided to make his point with violence, the old-fashioned way. He didn\u2019t get to Ainsworth because all the other Port Vale players jumped in the way. But in the commotion he did headbutt John Rudge, their manager. Properly slapped the nut on him.<\/p>\n I was standing six feet away, the only journalist to witness the whole thing, because everyone else had buggered off. You need a bit of luck, don\u2019t you? I rang it through to every national newspaper in the country and headed home knowing that I had got my job.<\/p>\n What has been your best or favourite story you have ever covered?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d have to say it was uncovering the sexual-abuse scandal, simply because of the size of the story. Trust me, there\u2019s a lot of job satisfaction to be had from sitting in court and seeing Barry Bennell get 36 years in prison. I\u2019ve lost count now of the number of people who have been sent down. The FA\u2019s chairman at the time, Greg Clarke, described it as a \u2018tidal wave\u2019 and \u2018the biggest crisis in the history of the sport\u2019. So, yeah, that was a bit different from writing about hamstring injuries or VAR decisions. And the good guys won ultimately: a lot of Bennell\u2019s victims, or players from some of the other cases, are good mates of mine now.<\/p>\n Some people think it\u2019s strange, but I\u2019m actually just as proud of exposing the FA for trying to cover up Mark Sampson making racial comments to two of the England women\u2019s players. I had the FA on my case, big-time. Legal letters, various threats, briefing the other newspapers against me. So it was a sweet moment to take my seat in the government hearing, opposite the Houses of Parliament, when they caved in and apologised publicly. I\u2019m still amazed the relevant people kept their jobs.<\/p>\n I\u2019m straying a bit from Forest, aren\u2019t I? OK, one of my favourites since I joined The Athletic was finding David Lewis, the guy who designed the Forest badge and introducing him properly to the fanbase.<\/p>\n I had spent years trying to track him down and, if I\u2019m honest, I\u2019d given up. I didn\u2019t even know he was still alive, bearing in mind my only info was the badge competition being in 1973 and that he was working in Nottingham at the time as a graphic designer.<\/p>\n Then I got a stroke of luck via someone I follow on Twitter and, all of a sudden, I\u2019m outside David\u2019s house in Staffordshire, knocking on his door and \u2013 \u2018er, hello \u2026\u2019 – hoping he might be good enough to speak to me, a complete stranger holding up my son\u2019s Forest shirt.<\/p>\n I think I floated back to Manchester that night! I loved writing that story and, again, I\u2019ve grown very fond of him (he\u2019s a lovely guy). I was so chuffed when Forest asked me to be the go-between and brought him in last season to say thank you properly and let him feel the love.<\/p>\n Another Forest one: my first article for The Athletic was telling the story of Craig Bromfield, the lad who was pretty much rescued from the streets and ended up living with Cloughie\u00a0for years, without hardly anyone outside the family knowing. Sometimes you just know it\u2019s going to be a biggie. Put it this way: it was no surprise it was turned into a book and that film companies are interested.<\/p>\n I can remember Alan Hinton, the ex-Derby player, saying that it couldn\u2019t possibly be true because he knew BC and he had never heard anything about it. Sorry, Alan! There\u2019s a lot of enjoyment from telling people a story of that nature, a story that people have never heard before, something they will find moving and maybe even a bit emotional. So yeah, that was a nice one, too.<\/p>\n What are some of the challenges you have faced in your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hmm. Interesting question. Every job has challenges, I guess. It\u2019s a skill, writing. And having a news sense, understanding what works as a story, is another skill, I guess. But let\u2019s not over-blow it. It\u2019s not saving people\u2019s lives, is it? It\u2019s not open heart surgery, or working for the emergency services, or being a nurse or doctor during Covid.<\/p>\n I\u2019m just lucky to be doing what I love, to be honest. I\u2019ve done six World Cups, six European Championships, travelled the world, Champions League finals, 500-plus grounds, 60-odd countries and written five books, including two on Forest. I can\u2019t complain because this is exactly what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n But challenges? Of course there are. It\u2019s not ideal having to work every weekend. The long drives after night matches up and down motorways, the late-night diversions, eating crap out of service stations, always being on the go. Yes, get that violin out \u2026<\/p>\n As weird as it sounds, sometimes you can have\u00a0too much<\/em>\u00a0info. You get told stuff off-the-record that you can\u2019t report and that can be frustrating in its own way. In fact, I\u2019d say I report probably 5% of what I hear. Less, if anything, Trust me, sometimes\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0better people\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know, too.<\/p>\n And sometimes people don\u2019t want to know the news, do they? I mean, they want good news, transfer stories, all the nice, fluffy, man-likes-man stuff. But do they want the bad news? That\u2019s a very different reaction.<\/p>\n Try telling Manchester United\u2019s fans that Wayne Rooney has put in a transfer request. Or tweeting to Liverpool\u2019s fans that, yes, Luis Suarez did say what was alleged and, no, Patrice Evra was not the bad guy here. Because football fans don\u2019t like that kind of news.<\/p>\n People treat their football club like a family and, if you say something even mildly critical, they react as if you are insulting a family member. Only on social media, though. Nobody is anything but delightful in real life, which is a strange dynamic.<\/p>\n As for other challenges,\u00a0I guess it\u2019s\u00a0not so easy these days to get close to the players. This means you tend to speak to people around them, their agents, PR people, family members, friends (I\u2019m on the phone all day, basically). but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not quite the same.<\/p>\n Also: the amount of time you have to spend checking out all the silliness on social media because Johnny Fuckwit from\u00a0transferbollox.com\u00a0is saying we are after Player X and \u2013 without anybody checking it – it’s getting the copy-and-paste treatment and suddenly becoming a \u2018thing.\u2019 The weirdest thing is that there are hundreds of people, thousands even, who swallow it. But it isn\u2019t journalism. It\u2019s .. well, let\u2019s call it what it is\u2026 it\u2019s time-wasting bollocks.<\/p>\n Have you ever had a bad experience with a manager or player?<\/strong><\/p>\n Haha! Where do I start? I mean, what do you think it was like covering Alex Ferguson\u2019s press conferences in the years before it was all filmed and he could act, on his turf, exactly as he liked?<\/p>\n Seriously, I can\u2019t even describe some of those Friday lunchtime sessions or that man\u2019s temper. And then, the next minute, he would be cracking jokes. It was amazing the way he could turn the rage on and off, like a tap.<\/p>\n I doubt it was always a bed of roses for the journalists who used to cling on to Cloughie\u2019s coat-tails too. I’ve heard all the stories. But they all remember those days with great fondness. And the Manchester press pack will say the same about Fergie. Far better that way, and far more interesting, than the sanitised, beige, controlled press conferences you see these days. It\u2019s football – of course there are going to be rows and fallouts.<\/p>\n I did get road-raged by Roy Keane once. Clearly, I was far too cowardly to tell him this \u2026 but it was entirely his fault, his made-up grievance, him losing the plot, classic Roy (laughing)! I love Keane. I\u2019ve been there for his debut, the World Cup in 2002, the break-up with Ferguson \u2026 he\u2019s brilliant. He has some amusing stories, too, about when he came back with Martin O\u2019Neill, however brief it was, and some of the people they encountered.<\/p>\n Overall, though, the whole media-football relationship is very different now. Football exists in this faux PR world. Everything is behind this veneer of window dressing, using a small army of spin doctors, almost government-esque. So that\u2019s where the conflict can be with some clubs,\u00a0rather than with the managers\/players.<\/p>\n It\u2019s\u00a0up to people like me to tell the fans what is really happening, and then the fans can do as they wish with that information: take it on board, ignore it, whatever. I think the fans of all the clubs I cover know, on the whole, I get good info and can back it up.<\/p>\n Who is your favourite Forest player of all time?<\/strong><\/p>\n Oh man. Hard question! For two years, I fell in love with Stan Collymore. We all did, didn\u2019t we? Fucking hell, he was good. The closest I\u2019ve ever seen to the Brazilian Ronaldo. It pains me that some people don\u2019t believe it, or think that it\u2019s an exaggeration. He had magic in his feet, that guy.<\/p>\n But that was two years. Stuart Pearce, Des, Nigel, those guys were heroes of mine for a decade \u2026 and still are, in one sense. Nigel was such a player, our record postwar goal-scorer. And Psycho! His salute, every game. I still remember him waving to the Kop all nicey-nicey, then going mental towards our end, face contorted, fists pumping, the old punk rocker. He loved it! Hahaha!<\/p>\n Others, too. I always\u00a0had a soft spot for Johnny Metgod as a kid because of his free-kicks. Lars Bohinen was brief but special. Always liked Colin Cooper, too. Neil Webb was a favourite. And then I got to know the Miracle Men and I\u2019m lucky enough to be able to think of some of them as friends. Ian Bowyer, what a guy. Robbo \u2026 the most charismatic man you could ever meet. Colin Barrett, Garry Birtles, Frank Clark, such great blokes. Ian Storey-Moore, from even further back. What a club.<\/p>\n What are your thoughts on Forest\u2019s chances next season?<\/strong><\/p>\n Tough question, as we speak, in the first week of July before the transfer business starts kicking in. It\u2019s a bit slow at the moment and, though it will pick up, I wouldn\u2019t expect massive deals and huge money being spent. All the expenditure in the last few years \u2013 some good deals and some not such good deals \u2013 it all catches up,\u00a0in a financial sense. And Forest, to their credit, have always kept within the FFP boundaries. It\u2019s just tough when the wage bill has rocketed and the stadium, in the chairman\u2019s own words, is not fit for purpose to help more with revenue etc. Hence the season-ticket and ticket-membership price hikes.<\/p>\n What I will say is that the most important thing is the relationship between Marinakis and Cooper, especially when it could be a difficult start to the season (those away fixtures look pretty daunting, let\u2019s be honest). I think we need some extra quality in midfield, in particular. But I\u2019m hoping the quality down the bottom is not as high as it was last season when there really wasn\u2019t a truly terrible team in the division.<\/p>\n Where will we finish? I\u2019m on one WhatsApp group where quite a few people were saying tenth. I\u2019d love that to be the case. Realistically, though, that\u2019s a 14-point improvement from last season and would mean finishing above one of Man City, Man Utd, Newcastle, Arsenal, Spurs, Brighton, Chelsea, Liverpool, Villa, Brentford (not to mention Fulham and West Ham).<\/p>\n I\u2019d be happy with anything from 11th to 16th, to be honest. Let\u2019s hope a) Aston Villa don\u2019t come in with big money – because it would take big money –\u00a0for Brennan Johnson and b) we are clever in the market. On that front, I’ve heard lots of positive stories so far about Ross Wilson’s impact behind the scenes. So there are grounds to be optimistic, however hard it is moving out players right now. Consolidate, improve, establish ourselves as a proven Premier League team and then we can start looking at that third star on the shirt in the next three to five years\u2026<\/p>\n *Article provided by\u00a0<\/em>Louis Wheeldon<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Football Correspondent).<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Louis-Wheeldon-Writer](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.nottinghamsport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Louis-Wheeldon-Writer.png?resize=150%2C150\" "\\"\\"")
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