JIM McInally may only have played under the legendary Brian Clough for fewer than two seasons, but it is fair to say he learned some invaluable lessons during his brief spell at Nottingham Forest in the 1980s.

The fact that McInally is now the longest-serving manager in Scottish football – he has been in charge at Ladbrokes League One club Peterhead for over five years - certainly suggests that he picked up a few pointers.

Yet, one thing which Ol’ Big Head actively tried, in his typically madcap manner, but spectacularly failed to drum into the youngster during his time at the City Ground was a love of Brussels sprouts.

“We had a special dinner for lonely people up at Peterhead earlier this week,” he said. “I made sure there were no sprouts on the menu. One of my worst memories of Christmas was of Brian Clough forcing me to eat 10 of them.”

McInally unexpectedly found himself sitting down to turkey and all the trimmings chez Clough shortly after he had been transferred to Forest from Celtic back in 1984. It was, not surprisingly, to prove a memorable experience and one which always comes flooding back to him during the festive period.

“I stayed in a hotel when I was at Forest and Clough invited me to join him for Christmas dinner because he knew that I would be by myself,” he said. “He was just being nice. He had a good side to him that people don’t often talk about. It is certainly something I will never forget because I was down there by myself.

“He asked my team mate Steve Hodge to come along and keep me company. His son Nigel was obviously there as well. Nigel had not long joined Forest as a player. He was on an amateur contract for quite a long time to start off with. His dad used to refer to him as ‘The Amateur’.

“Clough took it upon himself to make sure I always ate vegetables. When Forest had team meals before games he would position himself across me at the table and force me to eat them. He used to always shout: ‘Now eat up your greens young man!’ That Christmas I was presented with a plate of Brussels sprouts and I had to eat them all. But it didn’t stick. I still can’t stand them.”

McInally continued: “Clough had a definite aura about him. There weren’t as many television channels in those days. So when the gaffer made an appearance on Parkinson or Match of the Day you noticed him. He was a huge personality. To be around him was intimidating for a young man. I was just 20 at that time.

“But the most intimidating thing that Christmas was he was the doing the cooking. He was a little bit worse for wear too. I can remember thinking I had cracked it by eating the Brussels sprouts. But then he remembered he had a tray of chicken drumsticks in the oven. I was stuffed, but you couldn’t say no, you daren’t.

“His family had no hesitation in ditching him and leaving Steve and I alone with him. They had a lovely big house and went through into the living room to watch the telly. Even Nigel legged it. His wife Barbara said: ‘We’ll let you sit and listen to his rubbish’.”

Christmas Day viewing in the Clough household, though, didn’t consist of the Queen’s Speech and The Man With The Golden Gun, as McInally would soon discover.

“Forest had beaten Celtic in the UEFA Cup the season before,” he said. “The gaffer had had a glass or two too many. He knew I was a huge Celtic fan. He always used to wear a green top when he was in the dugout. He would tell me it was his Celtic top. So to wind me up he put on the video of the game. It was bizarre.

“The game had been live on ITV and Saint and Greavsie (Ian St. John and Jimmy Greaves) had presented the programme. The sides had drawn 0-0 at the City Ground and this was the return leg. Ian St. John said that Celtic would beat Forest and he started shouting at the telly. ‘You thought we would lose!” he screamed. Celtic were the favourites, but Forest won 2-1.

“Davie Hay had told Cloughie he had a pub in Paisley in the first leg. When the Forest team got off their plane in Glasgow they got on a bus and went straight to his boozer. Everyone on the bus had two or three drinks and then Clough told the barman to put it on Davie Hay’s tab. His gamesmanship had started.”

McInally left Forest for Coventry City the following season before moving on to Dundee United where, under the guidance of another legendary manager in Jim McLean, he enjoyed the most fruitful spell of his career, playing in the UEFA Cup final, winning the Scottish Cup and representing Scotland on 10 occasions.

Since retiring as a player back in 2000 the former midfielder has occupied a variety of coaching and management positions at Sligo Rovers, Celtic, where he worked with the youth teams, Greenock Morton, East Stirlingshire as well as at Peterhead.

Clough is, despite the many successes he enjoyed at Derby County and Forest, remembered now as being one of the game’s most outrageous characters, but McInally feels that many of his beliefs about football are as relevant now as they were in his heyday.

“What Clough was brilliant at, and what I think Jose Mourinho does very well in the game today, is teaching players in each position the best way to play,” he said.

“A centre half, for example, was to header the ball and defend. I can remember Neil Webb on his debut making the fatal mistake of passing the ball back to his centre half twice. Clough told him at half-time: ‘If I see you passing the ball back to the centre half you’ll be sitting next to me in the dugout. I pay you to make the good passes. I pay you to do positive things. I don’t pay them to be on the ball’.

“Sure enough, Webby did the same thing in the second half and he was hooked. But he ended up getting sold to Manchester United for £1 million. Clough installed the habits in him which made him an international player. When you’re a midfield player the first thing you should do is try to play a positive pass. The game nowadays is littered with players who try to play nothing passes. They pass it back because it looks good.

“I was a full-back in those days. I was told to stop crosses. At home he put on onus on you to go forward and attack. Away from home you had to defend. These are simple things, but they will never get away from football.”

Not eating his Brussels sprouts on Christmas Day, however, is something that Jim McInally has managed to get away with.