I’m a former Man Utd star, I signed my first contract with legendary manager who wouldn’t tell me how much I’d earn

MARK CROSSLEY knows all about playing at the highest level, making his name at Nottingham Forest and even having a spell at Manchester United.

But his first contract under legendary boss Brian Clough left him with a mystery salary!

Crossley explains all in his own words, exclusively on SunSport…

I MADE the worst prediction ever when we got back into the dressing room after this opening-game victory in 1992 — the first to be screened live on the all-new Sky Sports.

We had just deservedly beaten one of the pre-season title favourites and it should been more but for some great saves from opposite number David James, who was making his debut for Liverpool.

In the dressing room I said to team-mate Stuart Pearce that I really fancied us for a top-six place that season.

We then went on to lose our next six league games in a row, won only one of our next 16 and ended up being the first team to be mathematically relegated from the all-new Premier League which, even 32 years on, is a horrible memory.

Quite rightly, Pearcey never forgave me, mainly because I said it once before at the start of another season and we went on to have a horror campaign. You could call it the curse of Crossley!

Despite losing world-class defender Des Walker to Sampdoria in the summer of 1992, we still had a wonderful squad.

But then we sold Teddy Sheringham to Spurs a fortnight later — and arguably losing two key members of the spine of that side was too much.

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Teddy may not have been the quickest striker but he more than made up for that with a brilliant football brain. It was no  surprise to me to see what he went on to achieve at international and club level.

These were the days of the rigid 4-4-2 but Teddy was smart enough to break rank and would slot into a hole and create and score so many goals for himself and others.

Even without Des and Teddy, we still thought we had enough with Psycho (Pearce), Keano (Roy Keane) and (Nigel) Cloughie Junior in the side.

But as  the season went on and we lost games, so many decisions seemed to go against us and the confidence drained.

The media painted a picture of us being a team that was “too good to go down”. Sadly we proved that not to be the case.

This opening win against Liverpool was the best thing that happened in the entire 1992-93 campaign — just these 90 minutes.

In that moment, I don’t think any of us would have ever been able to comprehend the sort of effect Sky TV would have on  football’s top flight at that time.

The  only real difference for us from the end of the previous season in the old First Division was that this was the first league game to be screened live at the start of a new campaign.

We had been brought up on a diet of watching a couple of games of edited highlights on Match of the Day and another couple on ITV’s The Big Match.

Now every top-flight game is featured on Match of the Day and a couple of times a week viewers have the build-up, the full live match and all the interviews afterwards.

It’s taken for granted what we  watch now. But then it felt a little bit different.

What is noticeable over three decades on is how the average crowd has increased for a Premier League game.

The influence Brian had on my  professional life cannot be measured

Mark Crossley

On this first weekend of the season the average attendance in the top flight was 21,642, compared with last weekend’s eight Prem games with an average of 42,040 — almost double, illustrating just how the league has grown the game on and off the pitch.

I think all the Forest players felt awful for boss Brian Clough in that final season to end in relegation after his incredible management success.

It was also clear that Brian had been ill throughout that campaign, too.

My honest opinion is that I think he would have quit had we won the FA Cup in the 1991 final. It was the one  trophy that had eluded him during his management career but he still had a burning desire to win so carried on.

The influence Brian had on my  professional life cannot be measured.

I am convinced without him I would have had nowhere near the career I had.

He was genuinely a huge father figure to me — and here’s just a tiny example of our relationship.

When I first signed for  Forest, above my signature the contract was completely blank. Cloughie said he would fill it in.

Excitedly, I rushed home to tell my dad that I had signed a contract for the club. You can imagine my dad’s first question to me was: “How much are you getting a week?”

Er, a pause, because I had absolutely no idea. Dad looked at me completely bemused.

But that was the trust I had in the man. He never let me down and I was completely happy with what Cloughie gave me.

But he knew he could completely trust me if I was happy for him to fill in my contract without me knowing.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk