Richard Williams talks to the Burton Albion manager who faces the biggest test of his low-profile career in tomorrow's FA Cup third round

As he sat down to face the press this week, Nigel Clough looked like a man about to have his toenails removed without an anaesthetic. He may be the son of English football's most notorious self-publicist, but seven years as player-manager of Burton Albion have clearly failed to alter the priorities of a man who, during a playing career that featured 14 England caps, more than 300 matches and a century of goals in the Premiership was noted for his aversion to the media spotlight.

As the younger of Brian Clough's two sons prepared to send out his Conference part-timers to face Manchester United tomorrow, his behaviour during the run-up to the biggest day in the Staffordshire club's history provided further support for the belief that he inherited his nature not from his headline-hogging father but from his calm, self-effacing mother.

"He's our longest serving manager and without doubt the most successful," Burton's chairman Ben Robinson said this week. "He's taken us to levels we never envisaged, he's made us a lot of money from the TV appearances and the cup runs, and he's done it without asking for anything for himself."

Nor, it seems, has he done it as a stepping stone to greater things. Handling a playing budget of around £750,000 a year has not been used as a form of work experience, but as an end in itself. Five years ago he told me that he was unsure about the extent of his own ambition. "That was the reason for having a go at this level," he said, "to see if I enjoy it and to find out if I'm any good at it."

Tomorrow's FA Cup tie against the former European champions is a symbol of his success, but it would be unwise to imagine that it provides any further clues to the ultimate football destiny of a man who will celebrate his 40th birthday in March.

"I get the feeling that Nigel is extremely happy," said Ian Storey-Moore, a Burton player-manager of an earlier generation. "It suits him, and he's done okay. It's not easy to manage a club at that level. But if you get into management in the league, it's awfully time-consuming."

Like Clough, the 60-year-old Storey-Moore is a former Nottingham Forest favourite who played for England. Both topped the club's goalscoring charts for five seasons before being sold - Storey-Moore to United in 1971, Clough to Liverpool 22 years later. Each was forced to quit the professional game with ankle problems that prevented them from training properly, and both subsequently placed family considerations ahead of their management ambitions.

"When I took the job in 1978 they were in the doldrums and there was no money at all," Storey-Moore said. "I was on 30 quid a week as player-manager, and the whole budget was about £500 a week. The only place we could train in the evenings was a little patch of land behind the main stand, after we'd cleared away the stones and the dog dirt. But I enjoyed it, and I think that period was the start of the club's revival.

"They had a bit of a lull a few years ago but they got a personality as manager again and Nigel's given the town the fillip it needed and put them back on the map. There are some lovely people at Burton and I'm pleased for Ben Robinson because he's put a lot into the club."

Robinson, a local insurance broker who saw his first Burton match at the age of eight and first became chairman at 31, appointed them both. "Nigel is a guy with no ego," he said. "He's honest, sincere and kind, and I think we've seen over the past few years that his main priority is to spend quality time with his young family. He'd rather be waiting at the school gates to greet his kids than doing anything else."

The general belief is that Brian Clough's fierce drive to succeed in management, after his own playing career had been truncated by injury, shaped Nigel's determination not to miss the opportunity to be with his own children, the seven-year-old William and five-year-old Helena, whether on the school run or at the family home, a farmhouse in the Derbyshire dales.

"For his dad to achieve what he did," Robinson observed, "it must have meant sacrifices in his family life. Nigel's got a balance here, and it's worked to our advantage."

On the pitch, however, Brian Clough's philosophy is directly reflected in his son's attitude to the way the game should be played. "You had to hold the ball," Nigel told me. "If you were playing up front, that was the first rule. If you didn't hold the ball, you weren't doing your job. You were also made aware that part of your job as a forward was to get hurt, to get kicked. So you accepted that. And the emphasis was always on the team. There were no individuals. It wasn't really rocket science, you know. It was remarkably simple."

Ego-less and well-mannered as he may be, Clough is no soft touch. "Players who've been at league clubs would soon suss out a man who didn't do the business," Robinson said, "And when it's necessary to get arsey with players, he does. He's a very intelligent individual, and on a day-to-day level he's very controlled, but he's certainly earned the respect of the players here."

Although his father famously painted the roof of Hartlepool's main stand during his early days in management, Nigel was able to stand back and watch Burton's new £7 million Pirelli Stadium go up without needing to pick up a brush himself.

His captain, however, did paint the ladies' lavatories. Darren Stride, a building contractor who made his debut at 16 and has played more than 500 games for the club, was also required to dig a two-foot ditch in front of the main stand recently in an attempt to drain some of the water responsible for the new playing surface into a marsh.

"We like to pass the ball around a little bit, too," Clough said in response to suggestions that the conditions might benefit the home team. "So it's not ideal for us, either. It might be a bit of a leveller, but only a little bit."

Burton are currently in their fifth season since he took them into the Conference, and their sights are set on entry to the Football League, but back in October they were bottom of the table. Now, after one defeat in their last 15 matches, they are in mid-table and about to make a profit of around £250,000 from tomorrow's match.

This will be Albion's second meeting in two months with United, who provided the opposition on the night Alex Ferguson and Barbara Clough, Brian's widow, declared the new stadium open.

"It would be nice to put on a good performance here," Clough said, "but a 0-0 with a bad performance would make a bit more difference. It's a disappointment that we weren't drawn to play at Old Trafford, because we'd have loved these lads to run out there. A lot of the lads here have been released by Football League clubs. Games like these make up for that huge, huge disappointment."

Very different from his father he may be, but there was more than a hint of the old man's directness and spontaneity in his insistence that his players will face Ferguson's all-star team tomorrow without a game plan. "We'll just do our thing and see what happens," he said. "Believe it or not, we haven't had them watched. The advantage of playing Manchester United is that you don't have to send the chief scout halfway around the country to see games. All you have to do is turn on the telly." ... Guardian Service