John Robertson

[Derby My Arse]

I can still hear the crowd shouting skin him Robbo every time he got the ball and he never disappointed because he skinned his full back every time.

On the inside or on the outside. With his right foot or with his left foot. Fullbacks didn't know if they were coming or going. Robbo made even the best ones look ridiculous.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

Robbo not well again.

Fingers crossed he comes through.

[Salvatore Matrecano]

Tbh I worry every time I see this thread bumped. Hopefully he will be well enough to go to the Malmo game.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

Tbh I worry every time I see this thread bumped. Hopefully he will be well enough to go to the Malmo game.

I sadly think the chances of that are slim.

Please prove me wrong John.

[Marinakis Red]

Come on Robbo pull through

[Joe Baker Legend]

Get well Robbo...our little fat guy.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

Robbo not well again.

Fingers crossed he comes through.

Tbh I worry every time I see this thread bumped. Hopefully he will be well enough to go to the Malmo game.

I sadly think the chances of that are slim.

Please prove me wrong John.

So John didn't make it last night.

Worrying.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

Robbo as sadly left us.

Rip John you were simply the best.

[GentlemanBob]

I loved this man for everything he did for us but also for representing what an "ordinary" bloke could achieve.

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

I loved this man for everything he did for us but also for representing what an "ordinary" bloke could achieve.

Exactly mate.

I consider it an absolute privilege to have seen the majority of Robbo's 500 odd appearances for us home, away and abroad.

And when I say privilege I mean privilege.

He looked like a homeless man, a tramp, he smoked (even at half time) and he drank. He was short, fat and he had less pace than a Shippo's carthorse.

But give him the ball at his feet and he would skin any full back on the planet and dump them on their backsides. And he did it week in week out for years.

A true genius in every sense of the word.

Thanks Robbo for all the brilliant memories.

I will never forget you.

RIP young man.

[jurgen rober]

Piece in Times by Jonny Owen
Thursday December 25 2025, 7.54pm, The Times

It is strange that a player who had a significant role in Forest’s brace of European Cup triumphs never landed any individual accolades, even at his own club
It’s a line he’d say to me when some star-struck football fan had done a double take and recognised him and often dissolved into a mass of fumbling thumbs and excited words as they asked him for a selfie.
This time it was all in Spanish. We were walking to the San Mames together in Bilbao, where we were guests of the club there, Athletic, and as we cut through the huge Basque crowd, more and more people recognised him. As the crowd around him got bigger and bigger he muttered to me in that unmistakable Glasgow drawl: “How do they know me, eh?”
That was John Neilson Robertson. A man who had conquered Europe as a player and been to World Cups with his beloved Scotland, yet he still couldn’t quite believe how people knew who he was.
Brian Clough certainly knew. He was his favourite player and also without doubt the greatest ever to don the famous Garibaldi Red of Nottingham Forest. Just ask Stuart Pearce. He told a fan forum recently who the greatest was — it was Robbo. John though? Well he was the opposite of the manager who made him.
Trevor Francis, Brian Clough, and John Robertson of Nottingham Forest FC in Amsterdam, 1980.
Humble Robertson was the opposite of Clough, left, the Forest manager who made him

A born worrier was how he once described himself to me. All his team-mates said he’d check the team sheet on a Friday to see if he was on it. Imagine that? Their greatest ever player. The fulcrum of the team. The man who dictated how they played was never quite sure if he’d get picked.


Maybe that’s why, now, with the decades past, it seems so strange but makes sense that he never won any personal accolades. When I was making the film I Believe in Miracles I was astonished to find out that not only did he not win the Ballon d’Or but he wasn’t even in the top ten! I know, it’s actually ridiculous isn’t it? The people I spoke to at Uefa when getting the footage sorted couldn’t believe it either? They actually thought he was a winner.
Surely the man who provided the assist in the European Cup final in 1979, then the winner in 1980, won the award? It was the same with domestic accolades. He never got any. He never even won the Forest player of the year. It kind of sums up John. He just wouldn’t have been that kind of player. Wouldn’t have pushed himself. Happy to be part of the team with the players he loved.



Of course the most important people, well they knew. His team-mates. The manager. “Give it to John Robertson” was the crux of all his coaching instructions. Indeed, when I started the film, I asked them all who was the player? To a man they said, John Robertson. Trevor Francis said he was the best player he ever played with. That’s domestically and internationally — and Trevor played with some true greats.
In the past two decades he’s always topped greatest-ever player polls at Forest because time changes perspective. John, a huge music fan, was like a great song that over the years has aged like a fine wine. The way he played. What he achieved and the way he did it.

He was a player of his time but also before it. Two-footed. Low centre of gravity. A gorgeous passer of a ball. He could leave several players on their backsides. Cross it on to a sixpence and score a penalty with a laser-like focus. His footballing brain was like nothing I’ve ever known. I’d sit by him in games and every so often a line would escape from him, almost like a verbal eruption that he couldn’t keep in anymore. Frustration bubbling that no one else could see what he could.

“There’s a bloody ocean of space there on the right!” he’d point dramatically. Not talking to anyone, just to himself. To the team on the pitch. I used to wait for it. I’m smiling now thinking of it. Sure enough the ball would find its way there and there’d often be a goal. It was like watching a game with a footballing Nostradamus.
John often said to me he had a second chance at life. After an extraordinary career he left the game with very little. He tried the pub thing most footballers of the time did, but he knew he had to stay out of that place as much as possible; he even couch-surfed for a while. It was his second wife, Sharyl, who turned it around for him. He was devoted to her and the family they raised. She was with him until the end.


After leaving the game, Robertson went into brief decline, even couch-surfing for a time until his second wife, Sharyl, helped him to turn things around
John became a good friend this past decade. I went away with him and met almost every Thursday in his favourite café bar in West Bridgeford. The famous Thursday Club as it’s now known. Meeting with his ex-playing friends — Garry, Frank, Colin, Ian, Seamus and Paul. I’ve been lucky they’ve let me into their world and my life has been infinitely better because of it.
Other Forest greats who don’t live in the city will call in. Some weeks it’s Tony and Viv. Others it’s Ian and Steve, with the current manager Sean Dyche, who Robbo loved dearly.
John Robertson 1953-2025​

John Robertson obituary

John Robertson interview: Without Clough I wouldn’t have had the career I did
He was the gravity of it all. A wonderful raconteur. No one told a story like John. Told a joke or sang a song. I used to call him the Prince of the city. Everywhere he went people would shout “Robbo!” And he’d give them that cheeky smile. Robbo was handsome too, you see. All that stuff about the little fat guy but when you first met him you were struck by how charismatic he was. I always thought in his heyday he could easily have been on guitar in the Bay City Rollers. That Caledonian twinkle.
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He did later have an Indian summer in his home town as assistant manager to Martin O’Neill at Celtic. They both did remarkable things at Grantham, Wycombe Wanderers and Leicester City; that footballing brain used to full effect. This man who had left home at just 15 for a foreign city, never ever losing his accent but was so homesick for his clannishly close family. He later lost his beloved older brother Huwie (who taught him with the ball). “Just give it a week more there, son,” his father would say. And he did, and ended up becoming the greatest in the club’s history.

Robertson, right, enjoyed a special bond with O’Neill, assisting the Irishman at various clubs he managed, including Celtic

I can barely believe I’m writing this on the strangest Christmas Day of my life. I’ve lost someone who’s had a profound effect on me, his family, his team-mates, his club, his city and country.
There is one memory that I remember more than any at this moment. It was the night of the première of the film at the City Ground. Thousands packed into the famous Trent End and the players were all in the tunnel waiting to be let out as they used to when they performed those extraordinary feats across Europe and seared themselves into the memory of a generation.
As we waited I realised I was at the back and it was just me and the Miracle Men. All standing in the tunnel, waiting to be called out. You could feel the atmosphere all around us. It was fever pitch. Suddenly Tony Woodcock shouted: ‘“Just give it to Robbo, lads!” Then Colin Barrett and Garry Birtles shouted the same. Next it was Peter Shilton and Archie Gemmell. “Aye, just give tae Robbo!’ Frank Clark smiled at me. “It’s what we always used to shout, Jonny,” he said.
Robbo stood right in front of me and just gave a little impish, almost embarrassed, smile. That was him. And so I’m glad they all got to do it together one more time

[Sniffer Dog (Admin)]

That's a great piece absolutely superb.