“In 1979, when Nottingham Forest made Birmingham City striker Trevor Francis the first £1 million player in British football, more than doubling the previous record, his new manager, Brian Clough, breezed in late to Francis’s introductory press conference, stopping only to give his new star a playful thwack with a squash racquet before heading off to the courts. … Cultural shifts and changes in locker-room power dynamics make it unlikely that British football’s first £100 million player, Manchester City’s Jack Grealish, will be subject to quite the same level of autocratically eccentric negging, which is not to say his famously intense and meticulous new boss is a stranger to idiosyncrasy. …”
The Ringer (Audio)
