At first glance you might take them for a run-of-the-mill estate agents, Clough, Taylor and Gordon, advertising themselves, in order to seem a little more hip, as CTG Properties or even Realty. They might equally be known as MFS, Mouther, Finder and Sorter but we know them as the three men, yes, the three men, who made the Derby team in the half-decade either side of 1970 and then Nottingham Forest ten years later. The three men, who first caught up the teams of Bill Shankly and Matt Busby and then would supersede those of their successors.

Brian Clough arrived at Derby in 1967 with Taylor as an established team for two years at Hartlepools and left Forest in 1993. Peter Taylor left Forest in 1982 but the years that interest me are 1969 to 1981, not because they were those of the clubs greatest successes, although that is worth noting, but because they are precisely the years of the third, the silent partner, Jimmy Gordon, the one who made things work on the field physically as the hard trainer but also psychologically as a melder. James "Jimmy" Gordon was a Scot, another like Shankly and Busby hewn from the black stuff. He was born in Fauldhouse in 1915, so thirty miles and two years from Glenbuck and six years and just fifteen miles from Bellshill. And like the other two Scots masters he grew up to be a wing-half, described as both robust and Scottish old-fashioned, clearly with a strong loyalty trait, at twenty going straight into the game in England at Newcastle for a decade and finishing in 1954 after at the remarkable age of thirty-eight after a decade more at Middlesbrough.

And it was at Middlesbrough that his and Clough and Taylor's paths first crossed.  Clough was a local lad, a forward, who joined the club in 1955, also at twenty, so just as Gordon had finished playing, whilst Taylor, arriving the same year, seven years older and Nottingham-born, a goalkeeper, had already  a start at home-town Forest and a decade as a reserve at Coventry. In retrospect it could be seen as an un-heady mix of rookie, old-, but very fit, pro and good journeyman.

At Ayresome Park Taylor would soon establish himself as a first-team regular, if not exactly a shoe-in.  Clough would emerge as a powerful and prolific scorer at almost a goal a game, and, in spite of playing throughout in the Second Division, would work his way through to England honours. And meanwhile Gordon would, having moved seamlessly into training, obviously impressed the two younger men. 

However, Middlesbrough, in spite of Clough's exploits in front of goal could never finished above fifth place. There was no promotion. Clough blamed it on a defence that leaked like a sieve but in part it could have been because the team was set up to attack with the wing-halves and inside-forwards providing Clough himself, who ploughed the middle furrow, with the ball he needed to do what he did the best, indeed arguably best. Yet, Clough was not happy. Was he ever? He wanted away and finally, after two seasons as the division's top-scorer he got his transfer. But curiously it was only to Sunderland, also in the second flight and having finished the season a single place lower.

Meanwhile, Taylor remained at Middlesbrough for another season before his League career effectively came to an end. He was to play one more game and for Port Vale before dropping into non-League. But Jimmy Gordon was already gone. The why is unclear. There had at Middlesbrough been no change of manager throughout. Yet he had moved across the country to Blackburn, there joining "Happy Jack" Marshall. John Gilmore Marshall had been a run-of-the-mill full-back with Burnley, managed Rochdale in the Third Division North for a couple of years, seen them demoted, and yet in 1960 on the perhaps unexpected retirement of former Scottish international of repute, Dally Duncan, took over the Rovers, 17th in the First Division but having just won the FA Cup.

Yet the following year saw Blackburn move up to eighth, at which point he recruited Jimmy Gordon, in whose first year the club dropped back to 16th, as Middlesbrough also dropped from fifth in May 1961 to twelfth a year later. However, Blackburn then began to climb once more. At the end of 1962-63 they were 11th and in 1963-64 they were seventh but having topped the table at one point. And it had been done with a team that would be called "Marshall's Misfits", containing players that had not seemed to find a home elsewhere but went on to renown, Keith Newton, Mile England, Fred Pickering, Derek Doogan and others but for the moment with just one Scot, back-up inside-forward for a few games, Bobby Craig.

However that was to change.  After a year's hiatus the first recruit from North of the Border to arrive was Ben Anderson, an 18 year-old, Aberdeen-born central defender. Then the following year saw the signing of Malcolm Darling, a forward, Arbroath-born and just seventeen.  They were finding and recruiting them young. And finally 1967 saw the arrival of Adam Blacklaw, again from Aberdeen but via Burnley, this time a goalkeeper and at thirty with this time miles on the clock. However, by then Marshall had left the club. It had been relegated the previous season and despite finishing a creditable fourth in the Second Division he was on his way. Gordon, however, stayed for two seasons more. Anderson moved to Bury. Another Scottish defender was recruited, 20 year-old Frank Kopel, from ten games at Manchester United, make twenty-five appearances at Ewood Park in three years but return to Scotland, and as proof of his real potential, play 274 games in a decade at Dundee United under the late, great, indeed greatest Jim McLean. And this was all whilst Brian Clough and Peter Taylor had entered management as a team with first two years at Hartlepools in the Fourth Division with a little success and two further ones at Derby with considerably more. At the end of the 1968-69 season the club was promoted back to the First Division after a gap of sixteen years.         

Clough and Taylor had achieved the step back into the top flight by moving out eleven of the players they had inherited, only one of whom was Scots, thirty-two year old forward, Billy Hodgson, making for their first season in charge some judicious signings,  Roy McFarland, Alan Hinton, from Clough's last club as  a player, Sunderland, the Renton-born forward, described as large but slow, John O'Hare. The following season they then brought in Liverpudlian, Willie Carlin, said to be the last piece in the first jigsaw, John McGovern the Montrose-born, Hartlepool-raised, Taylor-advocated midfield pivot from their first managerial post and the trophy-signing, Dave Mackay, ex-Hearts and Tottenham, ex-Scotland captain, who was promptly converted from wing-half to a sweeping centre-back.  It meant that there were by then three Scots in the team right down its spine but clearly something still missing. It was Jimmy Gordon.

Gordon's re-joining was unheralded. Having on Wearside been the one to be listened to he was, on the face of it, now on the Derwent the follower not the leader. But that would be to misrepresent the situation. The duo became a trio, with Gordon not just the fitness-man, although Clough/Taylor teams were fit, but also the interpreter, between team and management and sometimes between Taylor and Clough themselves. And Derby was all the better for it, as results were rapidly to prove.  In its first season back among England's then top twenty-two clubs it finished fourth between Chelsea and Liverpool. True it then dipped to ninth the next but in by April 1972 it had swept past all-comers. Both Revie's Leeds and Shankly's Liverpool were pipped by a point. Moreover it was largely this mix of the three teams  that would continue for the next fours seasons. In 1972-3 Liverpool was Champion, Leeds third, whilst Derby did drop to seventh. In 1973-74 Leeds, Liverpool and Derby were one, two and three in that order. In 1974-5 Derby was on top of the pile once more with Liverpool second and Leeds now ninth. In 1975-6 Liverpool was was in first place again with Derby fourth and Leeds fifth.   

In fact it was only in the 1976-7 season that this oligopoly was broken. Liverpool still took the crown but now Leeds was a mid-table tenth and Derby a lowly fifteenth and just three points above the drop-zone. And there had, of course, been changes. Shankly and Revie had both retired from League management at the end of the 1973-74 season, replaced respectively by from the Boot-Room Bob Paisley and none other than Brian Clough. Liverpool went on to further success over the next decade and beyond. It is arguable that Leeds has never recovered. Even to day there has to be doubt.

Much has been written and filmed about Clough's time at Leeds. Most famously it lasted just forty-four days but there are plenty of other incidents packed into that short time. However, most pertinent to this story is that he did it without Peter Taylor but with Jimmy Gordon. It speaks volumes but is more complicated than pure abandonment. Whilst there had been fall-off in Derby's performance in the 1972-3 season it could be put down to some aging of players but also involvement in the European Cup. The club reached the semi-final only to lose amid some controversy to Juventus. And there were clearly other tensions within the club hierarchy so much so that in October 1973 both Clough and Taylor resigned and to manage relegated Brighton & Hove Albion, now of the third division. Jimmy Gordon did not go with them. He remained at Derby as caretaker-manager for a week and then under Dave Mackay as he came in for the following three seasons. Meantime down on the South Coast, with under them Brighton having narrowly avoided a second drop, Clough and Taylor without Gordon essentially fell out. Clough left for Elland Road. Taylor stayed for two more seasons with results that say at least something. Brighton did not to improve its position in the first,  climbed to fourth in the second and, with Taylor gone but having perhaps done much of the work, was under Alan Mullery promoted the next.    

The contrast in fortunes of the trio could not be starker and perhaps lessons were learned. Certainly, if not friendships, then working relationships were re-forged. And the result was that for the start of the 1975-6 season Brian Clough took charge of Nottingham Forest in the English Second Division. The previous May it had finished sixteenth. The next it was eighth. There had been progress but then, unlike at Brighton, Jimmy Gordon had been working alongside once more.  Moreover, the following season, 1976-77, there would be more progress still, enough to get the club by a squeak into third place, a point above fourth, Bolton, but three behind second, Chelsea, and five behind Wolves in top spot. Yet it was enough for another promotion into the First Division, with the lowest number of points ever recorded but more pertinently now, as had been on the previous occasion at Derby eight years previously, with all three of the trio of success in place, Peter Taylor having joined, or rather re-joined the previous summer. 

Nor was that to be the end of it. In fact it was the beginning. From barely scraping into the top flight one year later Forest were on the topmost step of all. It was done with the signing in the summer of 1977 in all three cases of Scot, Kenny Burns, and his conversion from centre-forward to central defender, the addition of Peter Shilton in goal and re-signing from Derby, indeed of the CTG, the Clough-Taylor-Gordon, team there of seven years earlier of another Scot, Archie Gemmill. These were in addition to yet further Scots, John Robertson, John McGovern once more, both already at the club, and the signing or again the resigning earlier by Clough on his arrival of John O'Hare. It meant that, whilst the First Eleven was not majority Scots, it was almost so as it followed being Champions with in 1978-9 second, to Liverpool, and the winning of the European Cup in 1978 -9 and again the following season.

However, it was a team, even teams, that was and were ageing, as all teams must. O'Hare was thirty-three, about to turn thirty-four. McGovern was thirty, almost thirty-one.  Additionally Jimmy Gordon was on the cusp of sixty-five. In fact Gordon, O'Hare and Kenny Burns were to have only one more season in them, a less than successful one, in which no trophies were added to the cabinet. Forest finished seventh in the League, was knocked out of all Cups fairly early and lost the two final inherited from the previous year. Moreover, with Gordon the conciliator gone, other, perhaps old, tensions came to the fore. Peter Taylor, at the age of just fifty-two, officially retired from the game in May 1982 yet by the following November was persuaded back, not to Nottingham but Derby once more. His stay lasted two seasons, in which the club did worse than nothing. It remained a division down and mid-table in the first and was relegated in the second. Meantime, Forest at first experience something of a bounce, finishing fifth and third, had three seasons in mid-table, revived again for three and then went back to the centre of the pack with throughout but a single glimpse but no touch of silverware.

From eighth in the League in 1991 the first and notably effectively Scot-free Clough team of any sort to reach an FA Cup Final took the lead, scored twice but still lost, to Spurs two places below it and an own goal in the 94th minute. Moreover, the following season it was eighth once more to Spurs' fifteenth. And then came the Premier League. In its entire first season, 1992-3, Nottingham Forest would win just ten games, lose twenty-two, finish bottom and by May 1993 was gone, as too was Brian Clough never to return either singly or in combination. In fact CTG was by then impossible. Peter Taylor had died in retirement in Majorca in 1990, aged just sixty-two. And, whilst Jimmy Gordon was still living in Derby, he was seventy-eight with just two years left of a Scots life, like many others, so much more effective and, hence, fundamentally important, I  maintain, to the game in their country than England's football-historians might have us believe. I leave you to make up your own mind.