We Are the Damned United

Jan 11, 2025 12:55 PM

Author:Phil Rostron

Brian Clough's forty-four-day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974 is one of the most infamous episodes in British football history.

While the bestselling The Damned United was a fictional account of Clough's short-lived but controversial reign at the club, We Are the Damned United reveals the true story, as told by the players he managed at the time.

It includes candid contributions from legendary names such as Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray and Terry Yorath, who reveal what it was like to make the transition from the relatively smooth management style of Don Revie to a constant crossing of swords with the outspoken Clough, who left the club flailing at the foot of the league upon his premature departure.

We Are the Damned United tells it how it really was rather than how it might have been.

Reviews

This seldom-told version of events [from a Leeds United perspective] gives the book a fresh aspect . . . an interesting read

—— Scotland on Sunday

Gives an insight into this most crazy of times in United's history

—— Yorkshire Post

'Sports book of the year'

—— Radio 2

'Compelling...Glorious...Has an appeal far beyond football'

—— Guardian

'Absolutely brilliant'

—— Independent on Sunday

'Engaging and ambitious - crafted from the author's own personal story, passions and obsessions'

—— Esquire

Sports writing at its very best

—— Daily Telegraph

The football book of the year

—— Sunday Times

A love song to the North, and all the contradictions and little irritations about the region that make us love it more"

—— Yorkshire Post

Promised Land' distinguishes itself from your average football book with a framing device evoking the Exodus. This enables Clavane to elegantly and evocatively explore his own Jewishness and the influence of the Israeli diaspora on his beloved football team as well as offering a potted history of the temper and temperament of the city itself ... Clavane's vision is far from gloomy - Leeds has a knack for self-sabotage but it's eminently capable of reinvention too

—— Timeout

This "Northern love story" has as the objects of desire both the city of Leeds and its football club. Pretty often, neither attracts much affection beyond the West Riding-but Clavane digs deep and looks hard in order to explain the forces that shaped both town and team.

—— Independent

Promised Land is both an anatomy of the peculiar mass psychology of Leeds United's support (shaped by the team's multiple failures in big games) and a paean to Clavane's home town, which once nurtured a thriving Jewish subculture.

—— New Statesman

A hard-edged and searingly-honest insight into why we all bother investing so much in 11 men every weekend.

—— Loaded

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