DAVID PLEAT

"Elton John sent me flowers after the newspaper allegations against me. A message with it said, 'Don't let the bastards grind you down""

There's nothing David Pleat loves more than to talk football. "Brown, Baker, Henry, Blanchflower, Norman, Mackay, Dyson, White, Smith, Allen, Jones that was the 1961 Tottenham team, the best Tottenham team I ever saw," he says, reeling off the names in a second, revealing his encyclopaedic knowledge of the game.

We're meeting the former Spurs boss and Luton Town legend behind enemy lines - in Watford, home to the Hatters' perennial rivals, at the Hilton. "I sold Matt Jackson from Luton to Everton on that sofa in 1991," he chuckles, pointing. "He only played six games for me but we sat down for three hours, and the price kept going up and up." In fact, the 79-year-old lives nearby.

He was born in Nottingham, to a family of Polish and Latvian descent, before entering football as first a player, then a manager, director of football, co-commentator and scout. His new autobiography, Just One More Goal, regales an eventful, varied career.

Pleat almost lost everything when he left Spurs following lurid newspaper allegations back in 1987. In meeting FourFourTwo today, he addresses those and a successful career that also featured Eric Morecambe, Alan Sugar, Paolo Di Canio, hyenas, riots and a famous pitch invasion of his own...

What was it like to become Nottingham Forest's youngest ever player, aged 17, and the youngest player from any club to score on debut in a Football League game?