Wednesday have gone through nine managers in the last decade, slumping from the middle of the Premiership and bottoming out in what most of us still think of as the Third Division, before starting the long climb back.

But a proud old club are stirring again. Last week, with Wednesday moving to within three points of the Championship play-off places, a crowd of 29,000 turned up for a home game with Hull. There will be more for the visit of Manchester City in the FA Cup today.

The tie is notable for bringing together for a second successive season two of Brian Clough's managerial proteges in Brian Laws and Stuart Pearce, regular Nottingham Forest full-backs for more than 100 matches. Regular, that is, until the 1991 cup final, when Laws was in for a shock.

"On the bus the day before, " he recalls, "Stuart Pearce was given a scruffy old screwed up bit of paper by Cloughy and told 'that's the team, son'.

Stuart read it out and we all started laughing. Then I went apes**t. I'd been playing in every game." Gary Charles was in at right-back, so it was him, not Laws, on the end of Paul Gascoigne's absurd tackle early on. Laws had the small consolation of appearing as a substitute before Des Walker's own goal settled the game in Tottenham's favour.

Despite that blow to his pride, he accepts he was "one of many ordinary players" Clough made into a better one, even if the way it was done still astonishes him. "We were a great side but we were never coached at any time, never said a word about the opposition, never did a free-kick or corner. It was all down to good organisation on the park by the players." Pearce, who had the better of his old team-mate when City beat Scunthorpe 3-1 at this stage last year, was one of the most influential organisers.

If Clough is looking down from the great dug-out in the sky he might spare a smile for the young man in the Wednesday tracksuit who ignored his wishes about taking an FA coaching course some 15 years ago. "I had to ask his permission to do my coaching badge and he went absolutely berserk. He said the FA knew nowt and couldn't teach me 'owt and I was better off staying with him because I'd learn more. And he was right in a way because you couldn't help but learn from Cloughy. I was cheeky enough to say that if he could guarantee me a coaching job I'd withdraw from the course.

My first day back, he called me 'coach' and every mistake I made after that all I could hear on the touchline was Cloughy bellowing 'Coach! Is that what you're going to show your players?'" In a dozen seasons in charge of Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Wednesday, Laws has done remarkably well. All the more so after having to live down an infamous incident when he hurled a plate of chicken wings at Grimsby's Ivano Bonetti after a defeat by Luton, fracturing the Italian's cheekbone.

He admits "that could have finished a lot of people, " and puts it down to an excess of emotion while under the strain of being a player-manager.

Today he is a wiser old Owl.

As a manager, he has taken lower division clubs to the third round of the FA Cup or beyond for eight of the past 10 seasons. "I know how important the cup is to clubs, " he says. "Realistically your chances of winning it are remote but what you can get out of it is beating the top teams when they're having an off-day and the financial gains the club can get. But if you gave me a choice of the FA Cup final or promotion, it would be promotion without a doubt. The Premiership is what we're aiming for. When, where and how remains to be seen but we're going to have a right good go."

His Wednesday squad is largely unknown apart from Deon Burton and Mark Crossley, Forest's goalkeeper in the '91 final. What Laws has is the potential at a club who eight years ago were two divisions ahead of City, before passing them on the way down in May 2000.

"This is as close as you're going to get to a Premiership club other than being in it, " he says. "Expectation levels will rise but they're level-headed people here. The way we'll do it is by hard work and determination . . . we're not going to buy it. We've got a hard-working bunch of lads and a manager who desperately wants to do well."