Brian Reade – An Insult To Cloughie

Humour and banter are all very much a part of the fun of being a football fan, but there’s a fine line between humour and insult. Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade today crossed that line and should at the very least apologise to the family of Brian Clough as well as every right minded football supporter in the land for comments made about Brian Clough.

He wrote in the Daily Mirror. ‘It’s good to see that Nottingham councillors have finally decided on a bronze statue of Brian Clough to grace the city centre, but at a cost of £70,000 it seems a bit steep.
Couldn’t they simply have re-named a bottle bank after him?’

Absolutely side splitting. Not. From what little I’ve been able to find out about this reprobate of a reporter, he’s a Liverpool fan. Could this be a result of some misguided grudge he has with the Great Man? Cloughie, after all did dare to give his opinions about Hillsborough, when he said it was the fault of Liverpool fans and that they were responsible for the deaths of so many of their own supporters that dreadful day. If this is the case, it’s a very poor and cheap attempt to have a dig at someone who is dead and cannot defend themselves, or reply. He should be ashamed of himself.

Apparently he’s an award winning journalist and in 2000 he was named Columnist of The Year at The British Press Gazette Awards, and in 2003 was named Sports Columnist of The Year in the Sports Journalism Awards (that’s Wikipedia for ya). The shortlist must have been very short in those two years, because from this article he’ll win nowt.

Liverpool fans boycotted The Sun newspaper and held protests up hill and down dale over comments made by the paper and the Great Man himself. I suspect that like me, many Forest fans will now be boycotting the Daily Mirror and at the very least, ignoring any articles written by the disgusting Brian Reade. Maybe he should take a closer look at his own profession before throwing stones, because his journalistic friends are not exactly famous for their sobriety. What’s that phrase about people who live in glass houses again? Don’t hold your breathe for an apology folks.