John Robertson

Nottingham Forest (first spell)

Robertson represented Scotland at Schoolboy and Youth levels and played for Drumchapel Amateurs before joining Nottingham Forest in May 1970, making his first‑team debut later that year. Used mainly as a midfielder in his early seasons, he featured only sporadically and was on the transfer list when Brian Clough arrived in 1975. Under Clough, however, he was converted into a left winger and became a central figure in the side, putting together a run of 243 consecutive appearances between December 1976 and December 1980. He scored the decisive penalty in the replayed 1978 Football League Cup Final against Liverpool, set up Trevor Francis's winning goal in the 1979 European Cup Final, and struck the only goal of the 1980 European Cup Final against Hamburg. Brian Clough, Robertson's manager at Nottingham Forest, was quoted as saying "John Robertson was a very unattractive young man. If one day, I felt a bit off colour, I would sit next to him. I was bloody Errol Flynn in comparison. But give him a ball and a yard of grass, and he was an artist, the Picasso of our game." In his autobiography Clough noted that "Rarely could there have been a more unlikely looking professional athlete... [He was a] scruffy, unfit, uninterested waste of time...but something told me he was worth persevering with." but that "[He] became one of the finest deliverers of a football I have ever seen – in Britain or anywhere else in the world – as fine as the…

After retiring from playing, Robertson was variously chief scout and assistant manager to former Nottingham Forest teammate Martin O'Neill at Wycombe Wanderers, Shepshed Charterhouse, Norwich City, Leicester City, Celtic and Aston Villa.

Club

International

Scores and results list Scotland's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Robertson goal.

Robertson's daughter Jessica was born in 1983 with cerebral palsy, which left her quadriplegic and unable to speak or control her movements. She had a short life expectancy. In 1994, Robertson and his former wife Sally challenged the hospital where Jessica was born for damages, claiming that they had caused her brain damage by a 12-hour delay to carry out a Caesarean section. However, they lost their High Court case in June 1996. Jessica died later that year, aged 13. Robertson had three other children, a daughter Elisabeth from his first marriage, and sons Andrew and Mark from his marriage to his second wife Paulette. He released his autobiography, Supertramp, in September 2012. He supported Rangers as a boy but described his time at Celtic as assistant to Martin O'Neill as the best years of his life in football. Robertson suffered a suspected heart attack while playing tennis with former Forest teammate Liam O'Kane on 23 August 2013. Robertson died on 25 December 2025, at the age of 72, following a long illness.

Legacy

Robertson was voted into first place in a 2015 poll by the Nottingham Post of favourite all-time Nottingham Forest players.