Hello everyone. Hope you have a good week since we last convened. Well, I thought I would mark the release of the big screen biopic of Brian Clough's life and times as manager of Derby County and Leeds United, The Damned United, by paying homage to Ol' Big 'Ead with this week's blog title. I hope to get to the cinema to watch this movie pretty soon and as and when I do, I will review it on a later renewal of this blog. In the meantime, I will talk about a few things that have come to mind in the past week or so. But let's kick off by talking about the man in the green sweater.
1. Cloughie was a man of his times
Well as I mentioned at the top, Brian Clough's life and career has been launched back into the public gaze with the release of the movie The Damned United as of last Friday. Clough's name is one of legend due to his remarkable achievements in getting not one but two relatively unfashionable East Midlands football teams promoted to the top flight of English football and ended up winning the league title with both teams, winning back to back European Cups with Nottingham Forest as well back in the days of bushy sideburns and bubble perms.
This was an extraordinary achievement and if you were to try and think of putting that into a modern context, it would be like Reading getting promoted to the Premier League and winning the title within two years. This of course would be just a pipe dream these days owing to the inequality in the distribution of wealth in English football, so Clough's story is one which the nostalgia wallowers can swallow up and revel in because it comes from an era when the underdog stood more of a chance.
A good many people enjoy the story of an underdog, the story of a man or a group that battle against the establishment or against a closed shop and come out on top. This has been evident in just the last 24 hours with Jenson Button's victory in the Australian Grand Prix, driving in his team's debut race after they had only ensured their place on the grid three weeks ago when the team's head of operations became benefactor and stumped up the money to buy the team after Honda withdrew from the sport. I'm sure I was not alone in feeling a warm glow in seeing Button take the chequered flag and seeing his team-mate Rubens Barrichello take second place while the established order of McLaren and Ferrari failed to finish, with the exception of Lewis Hamilton. Good news stories are all too often overshadowed in Formula 1 by the internal politicking and protectionist bureaucracy that gets in the way.
And so it is that people hail Brian Clough even after all this time. Here was a man who took on the established order not once but twice and got the better of them. As ever though, I do feel that nostalgia is prone to clouding some people's memories. Clough is often hailed as the greatest manager in the history of the game and the best manager that England never had and while these epithets have some grounding in Clough's achievements, it is worth putting certain factors into perspective and also slaying one or two myths that are perpetrated.
I must be honest, my personal recollection of Brian Clough does not take in first hand experience of his heyday. As a child of 1978, I was not born when Clough won the league title with Derby County, nor was I present on this planet during Clough's less than successful spells at Leeds and in my home town, Brighton. Nottingham Forest's league success in the 1977/78 season occurred a couple of months before my arrival and I was barely toddling by the time of Forest's back-to-back European Cup victories in 1979 and 1980. Obviously I know of his achievements through being a keen student of the history of football, but I did not bear witness to any of his golden hours.
My memories of Clough came much later when I started watching football in the late 1980s. By this time, Clough was no longer the magician he had been in his early years at Nottingham Forest as the ravages of his alcohol misuse had taken effect and his behaviour became more erratic. However, I always remember his Forest teams investing in young players and several players came through their ranks to become internationals, not least Clough's own son, Nigel. Forest by then were no longer challenging for the title but were still a good cup team and could beat any team on their day. As a Manchester United supporter, I remember they used to be a perennial bogey team back then, although this was before United became the all-conquering outfit they went on to be in the 1990s largely up to the present day.
However, it is because of a match that United played against Forest that I retained a soft spot for Forest and for Clough ever since. The match took place in January 1990 when I was just 11 years old and Manchester United were drawn away to Nottingham Forest in the third round of the FA Cup. The game was live on television and at the time, Forest were hot favourites to win as United were struggling in the league and came into the match missing several players due to injury. I remember the ever lovable Jimmy Hill saying before the match that he thought United would get thrashed because they were not warming up properly! Funny how that comment sticks in the head.
So why on earth would this match that happened nearly 20 years ago leave me with an affinity for Forest and Clough? Well, Manchester United won that match against the odds that day 1-0 courtesy of a goal from a much forgotten player called Mark Robins, who is now the manager of Rotherham in League Two. But from there, they went on to win the FA Cup that season, without ever being drawn at home and that was the first of many trophies secured under Sir Alex Ferguson. But had United lost at Forest back in round three, common belief at the time was that Ferguson would have been sacked and one of the genuine rivals to Clough's claim on being the best manager in the history of the English game would never have had the chance to stake his claim.
The Damned United has attracted some controversy for its portrayal of Clough in both the book and the film. The book on which the film is based was written by David Peace, who also wrote the Red Riding novels which are currently being serialised in a dark television production. I must confess that I have never read the book but I gather that the Clough family are unhappy with how Clough has been portrayed in Peace's book.
However, I think you have to take into account that Peace's book is not intended to be regarded as a completely factual account of the events that happened during his tenure as Leeds manager. Some aspects of the book are Peace's interpretations of events and unless Peace was a fly on the wall at the time, his insight would be restricted to the eye witness account of others and his own imagination. Therefore, aspects of the book such as Clough's supposed hard drinking in the manager's office several years before he supposedly became an alcoholic should be regarded as apocryphal interpretations of the events using Peace's journalistic licence, rather than actual accounts of what happened.
For those that want more of an insight into Clough's career and into the dynamics of the relationship he had with his Assistant, Peter Taylor, and also his regression after the grips of alcoholism had taken effect, I would advise you read another critically acclaimed book which is called As Long as You Don't Kiss Me by Duncan Hamilton. Hamilton had unprecedented access to Clough in his role as a reporter on the Nottingham Evening Post for over 15 years and so Hamilton was able to see Clough at his angriest, most bullish and also more vulnerable moments. For people who are interested in Clough's life story and who want to see a balance between the realisation of his genius but also reporting on the flaws in his make-up, I really cannot recommend this book highly enough.
It is inevitable that with Clough back in the public eye due to Michael Sheen's much acclaimed portrayal of him that bar room debates will be conducted up and down the country about where Clough sits in the pantheon of best managers in the history of the English game. Many people feel that his place should be firmly at the top of the list because of how he achieved success at two different relatively unfashionable clubs. I personally disagree with placing Clough in such a lofty position, although I must confess to some obvious partiality in assessing the lead contenders.
Clough certainly should rank among the real greats but there are a few reasons I would not select him as the greatest manager of all time. First of all, the notion that Clough did not spend big bucks to propel his teams to success leaves the lingering odour of the equine waste product. The first ever £1 million player that was signed in England was Trevor Francis, who Clough signed from Birmingham City in 1979. Clough was certainly not a chequebook manager by any means but he certainly spent heavily in upgrading his team if you measure by 1970s spending standards.
Secondly, what really stood out to me from watching a television documentary about Clough the other night was how his managerial stock peaked very early. This can be partially explained by Clough's premature retirement at the age of 27, but even so, look at the timeline on Clough's career. His league title win with Derby was at the age of 36. That is certainly an astonishing achievement when you consider that the youngest Premier League manager now is Gareth Southgate who is two years older than Clough was then and Southgate is widely considered to be too wet around the ears to be managing at that level. His success at Forest came in his first five years at the club and this culminated in his second European Cup success in 1980 by which time Clough was still just 45 years old, the same age Sir Alex Ferguson was when he became manager of Manchester United.
You can't help but think that there was an unwritten chapter or two that should have followed about Clough's career, but the flawed genius that he was saw his empire collapse not once but twice at the precise moment that his teams should have built on their success. At Derby, he fell out with Derby's chairman and left the club just months after he had won the title with the Rams and then if you fast forward to the early 1980s, Forest very quickly stagnated after their European triumphs and did not win another trophy for nine years. Having read Hamilton's book that I refer to earlier, I believe the primary reason for this was Clough's falling out with Peter Taylor which saw Taylor leave the club in 1982. Clough was never the same man after that and he metamorphosed into the bitter, idiocyncratic man that I recall when I started watching football. His teams were still decent but they could never sustain the consistency required to challenge the dominant Liverpool and Everton teams of the time, not least because Clough no longer had the appetite for the game that he once had.
Every person has their own yardstick by which they measure the best manager of all time, just as everyone has their barometers in picking out the best bands of all time across different eras, or the best tennis player or best movie actor. It is hard to go wrong if you start with the "trophies won" column, sustained success is guaranteed proof of being considered among the greats. There are those that also place emphasis on managers who built empires, who inherited struggling teams and gradually turned them around and established their own culture. This is a category in which Clough certainly scores highly. What I particularly look for though are managers that have demonstrated ability in presiding over more than one generation of a great team, knowing when to phase out players who had exceeded their period of useful life and knowing when to take a gamble on a new group of players, even if that attracts criticism.
It probably will not surprise you at all to learn that in my reckoning, Sir Alex Ferguson ticks all of these boxes. He has now been manager of Manchester United for over 22 years and it is hard to imagine another manager ever again being afforded that amount of time in the hot seat at Old Trafford. Ferguson's trophy haul speaks for itself, standing currently at ten league titles, five FA Cups, two Champions League titles and three League Cup successes and that is before you mention other peripheral trophy successes such as the European Cup Winners' Cup or World Club Championship. This trophy haul included the hitherto unprecendented treble of Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup in one season back in 1999.
There are those that will say that United have had it easy because they have been able to spend money on the best players. Well, it is true they are in the luxurious position of being able to compete for signing the best players but that is no guarantee of success and in any event, it only tells half the story. Ferguson has always believed in giving young players a chance with the likes of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Gary Neville all having graduated from the club's youth system. Even this season, United's success in the League Cup was achieved in no small part by the contributions from young players that have come through the ranks, such as Darron Gibson, Jonny Evans and Danny Welbeck. But when Ferguson took over, he inherited a club very different to the club United are now.
United were bottom of the old Division One when Ferguson succeeded Ron Atkinson as United manager in November 1986 and he inherited a team that had become cup specialists but which lacked the discipline or backbone to challenge in the league. A drinking culture had pervaded at Old Trafford prior to Ferguson's arrival and some players opted out of training, no doubt because they were nursing hangovers. The club also failed to invest in its youth setup until Ferguson arrived. This situation was very quickly rectified by Ferguson and this has borne fruit for United in the years that have followed.
Where Ferguson, Bob Paisley and Sir Matt Busby particularly stand out ahead of Brian Clough though is in terms of their ability in evolving their teams. The Manchester United team that Ferguson manages now is essentially the fifth or sixth phase of the team that Ferguson has led in his tenure and crucially four phases of that team in particular have been very successful. The great team that United had back in the mid-1990s with Eric Cantona, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes in it enjoyed a relatively smooth transition into the treble era team revolving around Roy Keane, David Beckham and Paul Scholes and the goals of Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole. And now look at the present day, with players such as Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo at the fore. Cantona is nineteen years older than Rooney, nearly old enough to be Rooney's father and yet Ferguson has been instrumental in getting both players in their time to be key players for United and knows what makes them tick.
Disbanding one great team and then building another is an extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve. Timing is crucial and luck plays a part too. But Ferguson has shown himself as a master at this over the years. Sir Matt Busby also scores highly in this respect given that he was forced to build a new team in the aftermath of the Munich Air Disaster in which he so nearly lost his own life. His rebuilding resulted in success though with the decorated Manchester United team of the 1960s winning league titles under the guidance of the "Holy Trinity", Charlton, Best and Law and this culminated in United becoming the first team to win the European Cup in 1968. And it is also why I would rank Bob Paisley higher than Bill Shankly in Liverpool's best ever managers. Shankly laid the foundations of the modern day Liverpool but Paisley built the wall by leading Liverpool to three of their European Cup successes and masterfully replacing players at the right time, phasing out the Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes era team and replacing them with the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Alan Hansen and bringing in an unknown Zimbabwean goalkeeper by the name of Bruce Grobbelaar to replace the outgoing Ray Clemence.
As ever, football is a game of opinions and I am certainly not knocking the achievements of Brian Clough at both Forest and Derby. However, for the reasons I have given, I feel that the three managers I have just mentioned are probably the rightful trio to sit at the top of the best managers of all time. The sustained success that each enjoyed and their ability to rebuild teams at the right time has resulted in those teams continuing to prosper, while I would argue that this was a skill Brian Clough did not demonstrate as strongly, not helped by the departure of Taylor from Nottingham Forest.
The question that is often asked is whether Brian Clough would have been successful in the Twenty-first Century game. Personally, I think he would still have had some success, but he would have needed to have refined his style of management in order to have achieved success. Clough's managerial approach was not very scientific, he was not one for building dossiers on the opposition or for making meticulous tactical preparation for each match. Clough came from the old school which was to always get his team to play to their abilities and to use his well honed oratory skills to good effect in motivating players. There are very few managers around of Clough's intellect or emotional intelligence these days, certainly none who are English. He was also a manager not averse to being physically confrontational if he felt players were not pulling their weight. Clough admitted to once having punched a young Roy Keane in the face and he managed to live to tell the tale!
But there are some aspects of Clough's management that would have had to have changed. Motivational powers are no longer sufficient in getting a team suitably prepared for winning top level football matches. The general level of fitness and conditioning in players at the top level and also the level of tactical awareness and discipline instilled by the use of systems such as Pro Zone have enabled players to be more aware of their responsibilities in getting the team to perform. Some people see a similarity in the charisma that Clough used to have and the brooding self-confidence of Jose Mourinho from the current era, but Mourinho is the master planner. He leaves no stone unturned and knows everything about the strengths and weaknesses of opponents. Clough never took an active interest in this type of preparation and that would have been costly in the modern game.
Clough would also have had to have been less of a maverick in the way he managed players from the modern era. Slapping players in the face and bellowing "You're a bloody disgrace" would not go down well among Premier League players who are constantly pampered and who consequently possess sensitive egos. Clough would have needed to cultivate more of a carrot and stick approach, developing an understanding of knowing which players respond to an arm around the shoulder and which respond to a verbal tirade. Any form of physical confrontation would be off limits now.
But there are some elements of Clough's approach that would be a breath of fresh air in the current climate. You would get no straight batting from him, he would provide an honest assessment of his team's shortcomings in post-match press conferences which would be a refreshing contrast to the usual bland, monotone cliches that the majority of Premier League managers utter to the media most of the time. He would also ensure that his teams always played good football, the perfect antithesis to many teams from the current Premier League that are set up to not lose matches rather than going all out to win them. But he would particularly make sure his teams kept their discipline on and off the pitch. Clough was the kind of manager who would impose a club fine if a player was caught with their hands in their pockets at any time other than when it was their round at the bar at the club team bonding session.
Brian Clough's colourful personality will ensure he will still be celebrated as a legend for a considerable amount of time. As with any legend, some achievements are magnified and are the stuff of urban myth. Nonetheless, Clough would enjoy the fact that people still talk about him nearly five years after his death and it is testament to his influence in the game that one legacy he leaves are a number of former proteges who have tried their hand at management. His sceptre still hangs over both Pride Park and the City Ground after all these years and every manager that passes through the gates of those grounds will always have the baggage of comparison to Clough, something they can never hope to emulate. The Damned United introduces a whole new generation to Clough's genius and for that reason alone, the Clough family should celebrate this exposure, whatever their misgivings about how Clough has been represented in both print and on screen.
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