Roy Keane will return to Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night admitting "the best manager" he ever played for was right to come down hard on him.
Keane will walk back into the City Ground convinced Brain Clough's spirit still keeps a watching eye over the club he guided to the pinnacle of European football.
The Irishman spent three of his formative years working under one of the most celebrated managers of his or any other generation, and is eternally grateful for the education he was given, even when that meant finding himself on the wrong end of Clough's famously withering rhetoric.
But as during his hugely successful time with Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Keane has few complaints about the code of discipline which operated there.
He said: "What you have to remember about Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough, to be fair to them, people talk about that side of it and they were very hard, but also very fair.
"Hard and fair is fine with me. Cloughie and Alex Ferguson were very hard with me, but I have to say when I look back now, generally they were fair with me as well, and that's what I try to do with my own players.
"Don't get me wrong, we are all different. It depends what time of day you might catch somebody. You might catch somebody on a bad day.
"But I look back at Brian Clough, particularly when he questioned a lot of my stuff - I had one or two incidents with him and I look back now to when he sent me back from Jersey for a drinking incident, and he was spot-on.
"He was just being fair with me. I was no angel."
Keane, who declined to elaborate on why new signing Pascal Chimbonda was missing from his team at Tottenham on Saturday - the full-back is understood to have been dropped after turning up late for a pre-match walk - retains a huge warmth for both Clough and Forest.
But he admits he is not quite sure what his former boss would think about him having launched his own career in management.
He said: "I don't know. I was young, I was raw in my time at Forest. I'm not sure, I'm not sure what he would have said, to be honest.
"He would probably have thought I would be the last person to become a manager because my own off-the-field life wasn't exactly perfect.
"I have to say, he was an absolute genius. I meet other players who played under him and we have all got our own stories.
"But he was a genius, an absolute genius, and certainly the best manager I played under, without a shadow of a doubt.
"I just feel very lucky, like other players who played under him, to have had that opportunity. He was a genius and he has still left his mark on the football club.
"We were there a few weeks ago (for a pre-season friendly) and you still feel he is around the building somewhere. I am sure he is, in spirit anyway."
Keane put the finishing touches to his preparations for the game as West Ham defender Anton Ferdinand underwent a medical on Wearside with a view to completing an £8million move from West Ham.
The manager said: "He is a good athlete, he is a good age, he has played a good number of games, and he is probably ready for a new challenge after coming up through the ranks at West Ham.
"He has had good experience and he will bring good competition for a place to our club, and hopefully we can get him on to another level."
But in the meantime, Keane will concentrate on the task of negotiating a way past Forest after bowing out of the same competition at Luton and then the FA Cup at home to Wigan last season, both at the first attempt.
He said: "I won't be resting anybody. I made that mistake last year at Luton and I have not forgotten that. That is very much in my mindset.
"They were two big cup games that I haven't forgotten about."
