Hinton was Derby's creator-in-chief, set-piece expert, a winger whose ability to cross the ball with precision accuracy from any position amounted to genius and he provided some memorable goals. "Playing with these guys was wonderful," Hinton said. "The Division Two trophy was the first one we won together but to then go and win the big league, with Clough and Taylor, was great." The 79-year-old is completely right though, because Forest look to be in a good place both on and off the pitch under Cooper and keeping the Welshman at the City Ground will be key to their future success.

Wolves chief scout George Noakes hailed from Wednesbury, and recommended Hinton be taken onto the club’s groundstaff which, at the age of just under 15, he did. The sort of tough love and discipline espoused by Cullis – known as ‘Sergeant Major’ – clearly paid dividends. The trusting approach could extend to match day. "I recall one time that we were scheduled to play Leicester City at Filbert Street," Hinton said. "Cloughie was okay with us watching the 1:30pm horse race on the television before we set off for the short trip to our East Midlands neighbours. However, he didn’t expect such atrocious traffic on the M1 and the team bus was hopelessly trapped in the hold-up. Seeing a police car coming along the hard shoulder, Brian leapt down from the coach and flagged it down. Next thing we knew there was Cloughie in the passenger seat of the car, siren on and lights flashing, clearing the way for the team bus to get through the build-up!" He is still as much of a fan as he always was, and isn’t shy in launching into an assessment of England’s recent march to the final of the European Championship. Derby fans will love it, but for our purposes, how about a compare and contrast of those three incredibly successful managers who remain icons of the sport?Hinton also spent a number of years coaching youth soccer in the Puget Sound area of Washington state and became known as "Mr. Soccer" in the area. [2] [5] He coached the U13-18 Crossfire Sounders boys team (now the Crossfire Premier Soccer Club, including boys and girls teams) from 1992 to 1997. [6]

After Matthew died I was really anti-religion for a few years, but then I came to the conclusion that a lot of the good things that happened to us, that was Matthew shining a light – I really believe that.We [Vancouver] had a superb team that was playing attractive soccer and winning,” he says. “I should have said to the head coach: ‘I’ve got this offer from Tulsa. What do you think?’ I guarantee there would have been a panic through the club and they probably would have thrown a lot of money at me. I wasn’t in it for the money.” Little did the Hintons and their seven-year-old daughter Tonya realize that their lives were going to change dramatically in 1977. If there were players who were nice and quiet he wouldn’t go after them so much, but those that were tough, like Archie Gemmill, he knew he could have some fun with. As a player he had loved playing alongside the likes of Wharton, Ron Flowers, Bill Slater, Peter Broadbent and Ted Farmer. And as a coach in America, the Wolves links continued by working with Kenny Hibbitt, Steve Daley, Phil Parkes and Paul Bradshaw. Growing up in England’s West Midlands, football was part of his DNA – so much so that he rooted for two clubs.