Peter Withe

After playing in the 1–1 league home draw the week after against Tottenham Hotspur, Forest agreed to sell him for £225,000 just before his 27th birthday at the end of that month.

Withe scored 39 goals in 99 competitive first team games for Forest.

This included 28 goals in 75 league games.

His place in the next three games was given to league debutant Steve Elliott; all of them ended goalless.

The number 9 jersey was then given to 22-year-old Garry Birtles who promptly became a regular first choice, winning the European Cup with Forest in this season and the following one.

Peter Withe (born 30 August 1951) is an English former football manager and striker who played between 1971 and 1990.

He began his career at Southport but left in 1971 after a handful of appearances.

Late that year he made an appearance for the reserve team of Preston North End but soon moved on to Barrow for whom he made one appearance (against his former club Southport on 1 January 1972).

After this he played in South Africa.

Withe played for Wolverhampton Wanderers in two seasons from 1973.

In 17 league games he scored three goals.

During the summer of 1975, Withe spent one season in the United States as a member of the expansion Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League (NASL).

He scored 17 goals and added 7 assists in 22 games, leading the Timbers to first place in their division, and tied for the best record in the league at 16–6.

Withe's goals that summer made him a Timbers fan favourite, who nicknamed him "The Mad Header" and "The Wizard of Nod".

In August the Timbers played two home play-off games in front of more than 30,000 fans each, numbers unheard of for US soccer at the time.

They advanced to Soccer Bowl '75, the League Championship final, in San Jose, California on 24 August, where they lost to the Tampa Bay Rowdies 2–0.

Withe returned to the West Midlands to join Birmingham City in 1975.

Brian Clough joined Nottingham Forest as manager in January 1975.

At Nottingham Forest he won the Anglo-Scottish Cup and Second Division promotion in 1976–77, First Division and the Football League Cup in 1977–78, and the 1978 FA Charity Shield.

He scored nine goals in 35 league games in just over a season before departing early in the 1976/77 season.

In the summer of 1976 he was joined by Peter Taylor, who had been his assistant at Derby County in winning the 1971–72 Football League.

From Taylor's arrival Forest immediately went into upswing.

Forest signed the 25-year-old Withe to make his debut for the club on 25 September 1976.

He scored on his debut in a 5–1 Football League Second Division home win v Carlisle United with strike partner John O'Hare also scoring.

Withe was given a new strike partner on 3 November 1976 in an Anglo-Scottish Cup 2–0 win at Ayr United.

Tony Woodcock was recalled to the first team, bringing speed and anticipation to the front two to complement Withe's height, strength and power.

Withe and Woodcock both scored at Ayr.

Withe ended the season as the club top scorer with 19 goals and Woodcock second with 17 and Forest's Player of the Year despite his November seasonal debut.

Forest's first trophy of the Clough and Taylor regime was in December that season beating Orient over two legs in the Anglo-Scottish Cup final.

Withe played in the 1–1 first leg away draw on 13 December 1976 but then spent two weeks out the side missing the 4–0 second leg win.

Forest won promotion at the end of the season to the top tier from finishing third in Division Two.

Withe and Woodcock won the 1977–78 Football League First Division and 1977–78 Football League Cup with Forest.

They ended the season as Forest's joint top scorers with 19 goals each.

Withe scored in the 1978 FA Charity Shield 5–0 win against Ipswich Town on 12 August 1978.

After a barren spell at Newcastle it was back to more success at Aston Villa with whom he won the First Division 1980–81, going on to score the only goal in the 1982 European Cup final and also win the 1982 European Super Cup.

He played for England 11 times, scoring once, and was a squad member at the 1982 FIFA World Cup.

After his playing career he worked as a manager, predominantly in Southeast Asia.

Withe was a big, tall, strong, powerful and imposing centre-forward.

Dangerous in the air, his ability to shield the ball was also an asset to teammates.

His biggest successes were when paired with a sharp, quick strike partner.