Clough

After a fairly successful football career, Brain Clough retired at the relatively young age of 30 and then made the leap into coaching. Three years earlier he'd suffered a serious knee injury during a match which is an all to common occurrence in the game. Although he recovered, the knee was never the same and consequently he only managed to play for the first team in a hand full of matches over the following two years. With football in the blood, coaching seemed like an obvious decision, however it's not a transition that is easy. There is a laundry list of former players who achieve success and honors in the game, that find that they are not suited to that role. That certainly wasn't the case for Brian Clough, who found himself at the right place at the right time and by 1968 at the tender age of 33 was appointed manager of second division Derby County. It has to be noted that his assistant Peter Taylor was another former player who he'd built up a good relationship, turned out to be good at spotting talent and scouting players.

Within four years Clough would take the struggling and underachieving Derby County to become the winners of the first division league title, and as champions participated in the 1972/73 European Cup getting to the semi final. This was quite an achievement, at 37 years of age he was now firmly established as a marquee manager in English football with the likes of Bertie Mee, Bill Nicholson, Matt Busby, Don Revie, Joe Mercer and Bill Shankly. Most of these managers were from the old school and consequently were quite reserved (with the exception of the flamboyant Malcolm Allison), compared to the charismatic Brian Clough . He was never shy in front of the camera and was quite comfortable voicing an opinion or highlighting the short comings of other teams. He was a frequent guest on tv as a football pundit and wrote columns for the newspapers and got a name for himself as outspoken and arrogant, but others found him entertaining and inciteful.

Despite this success, behind the scenes at Derby things weren't very good between Clough and the chairman who resented spending a lot of money on the transfer market and was particularly incensed with the manager signing players without his permission. The chairman who also was from the old school just wanted to go through the motions and run the club on a shoestring , but the younger and more ambitious manager wanted success. Money was now a big part of the game and Clough knew that you had to move fast to get he right players when they were available. Transfer fees were only going to get higher, and sometimes you had to pay the money and other times you could pick up a player for value. This led to a showdown, he and Peter Taylor tried to instigate a coup' by resigning in the hope that backlash from the loyal fans would force the board to reinstate them and then oust the chairman. This didn't happen and the Derby County board backed the chairman, accepted both their resignations and appointed a new manager. Clough and Taylor were out.

This would signal a turbulent couple of years for Brain Clough as he and his assistant only got offered a position at third division Brighton. In a way, not only had he worn out his welcome with Derby County but apparently with the first division too. This was the second time Clough and Taylor had tried to oust the chairman and it may have given the other clubs the jitters about hiring Clough and Taylor. The word might have been out in the very conservatively run English league that he was difficult to deal with, and in the end not worth the trouble.

However, right out of the blue Leeds United who had lost their long time manager to the England national team offered him the managers job. This seemed like a strange move, because in the past he had been very critical of Leeds united who he felt played a cynical and dirty style of football to achieve their success. Although he took up the position, (Peter Taylor stayed with Brighton) the well established players took his comments personally and resented him being the manager. After one win out of six matches, the players took their case to the clubs board and the 39 year old Brian Clough was sacked after 44 days. A few months later he became manager of Nottingham Forrest who were circling the drain near the bottom of the second division. Within months he persuaded Peter Taylor to leave Brighton and join him at Nottingham Forrest. The experience with Derby county and the short lived tenure at Leeds would come in useful going forward with Nottingham Forrest. Clough learned that you couldn't have an antagonistic relationship with the chairman, the board and the players all at the same time. Although there was no room for sentimentality in the business of football, a forceful and pushy personality would only carry you so far, you had to build up some relationship with the people around you. He never experienced the same issues with the chairman and the Nottingham board as had at Derby and Leeds. Forrest earned promotion to the first division in the 1975/76 season, won the Anglo-Scottish cup in 1977 and followed that up winning the first division championship in the 1977/78 season. The next season they lost out to their main rivals Liverpool and had to settle for the runners up position, but won their first European Cup. During this time they won back to back League cups, the European Super Cup in 1979. The following year they retained the European Cup with the satisfaction of beating domestic rivals Liverpool in the first round. All in all quite a selection of silverware.

After Peter Taylor left Nottingham Forrest, Brian Clough didn't have the same success, he continued keep Forrest competitive always finishing the season in the upper tier of the first division. There was a renaissance in the late 1980's with two Members Cups and two League Cups, but missed out winning the FA Cup in the 1990/92 season finishing runners up - the only trophy Brian Clough never won as manager.

The last question is why did the England leagues most successful manager not become the national team coach?? The unfortunate aspect to this was timing, because after the abrupt departure of Don Revie, Ron Greenwood was appointed temporary coach, but after a string of reasonable results, was given the job on a full time basis at the end of 1977. Clough had just got Nottingham Forrest promoted to the first division and the fact that the previous years had been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for him, the Football Association probably decided on a safe pair of hands and plumped for Greenwood. The perfect time for Clough to have been given the job would have been in 1980 after he'd won his second European cup, but the FA decided to keep Greenwood on until the 1982 World Cup. Another opportunity would have been after the 1982 World Cup when Ron Greenwood stepped down, but again he was passed over in favor of Bobby Robson. However, its quite likely that the Football Association wouldn't have wanted to have had to deal with Brian Cloughs ego and unconventional style of management. If things had gone wrong, the press would have had a field day exaggerating scandals on the England football team to sell papers and then hanging it around Cloughs neck. Another concern is that some of the England players who had success and honors at their clubs might have found Cloughs comments and style of management not to their liking . England missed out going to the 1984 Euro finals and so after just two years there were calls for Robson to resign or be sacked.t This may have been an other opportunity for Clough, but the FA stuck to their guns and kept the manager. In the 1986 World Cup, England the victim of one of the most blatant and cynical cheats ever seen, when the officials awarded a goal to Argentina that had clearly been punched in by a hand. England lost 2-1 and exited in the quarter final and this bad luck and aroused sympathy for Bobby Robson. England's earlier struggles in that tournament was overlooked and he was given a contract extension. This meant that Brian Cloughs window had completely closed. The medias favorite choice was passed by for the last time which in hindsight was probably a mistake - rolling the dice with the prickly and obtuse Brian Clough would probably have been worth it.

When Clough managed in football, there wasn't the money in the game as there was in the later decades. That all changed in the early 1990's with tv rights being sold to Sky. Consequently a massive amount of money went into the game through subscriptions to watch the matches, and this created a big increase in advertising revenue. That meant teams like Manchester United, who were already a marquee team, (that had underperformed for a number of years), with all the money that came their way, were now free to flex their purse-strings and buy up all the talent available. This would explain why Alex Ferguson who had only lifted one trophy in seven years was able to take advantage of this and racked up a lot of silverware over the next 20 years. Brian Clough was the past master in squeezing the last ounce of ability out of a player, motivating those who even themselves thought they were past their best and was able to create sense of purpose in a spirited team environment. Getting the right players whose face would fit to work in a system was the most import aspect of the game. By contrast Fergusson picked up and created a team of all stars with big ego's who were motivated by a massive pay cheque, notoriety and a celebrity status. Clough hated prima donnas like that, to him if they got too big for their boots he'd cut them down to size, which is something that wouldn't fly today. Alex Ferguson didn't have the ability to do what Brain Clough did, but by the time his managerial career was over, the inflated egos of the super rich players took precedent and Brian Clough would.