by Phil Rostron
Joe Jordan concurs. ‘The appointment of Brian Clough at Leeds was something I would never have expected to happen,’ he says. ‘It was something that never crossed my mind. Having said that, Clough did win the 1971–72 league title with Derby when Leeds were in the driving seat to do so. I think trying to beat Leeds became something of an obsession with him. That seemed to me to be at the root of his so-called hatred of the Yorkshire foe. When you put this into context, public criticism aimed at destabilising one of the superpowers when you are in direct competition with them kind of goes with the territory. Brian was a proud man and a winner, and by and large Leeds got the better of Derby over the years that they were slugging it out. That always took a bit of doing because Derby were a fantastic team under Clough.
‘So as a title-winning manager, he probably had the credentials to take on the Leeds job, although we will probably never know the full extent of who else was considered for it and therefore whether the correct decision was made. It appears to me, however, to have been a case of the wrong man at the wrong club at the wrong time, though within a short time of leaving Leeds he proved to be a very good manager indeed.
‘With Clough and Leeds, the chemistry was not right. In trying to understand that, it’s hard to bring to mind a comparison in recent football history: a title-winning manager who joins a rival championship-winning club two years later, with a history of conflict between the clubs into the bargain. Building two clubs from the floor upwards is no mean feat, and that is what he did with Derby and Nottingham Forest. Maybe at Leeds, and this is just a thought, he found that the building work had long ago been completed.’
Terry Yorath says: ‘In retrospect, I wish Clough had stayed, because if he’d been there for three years or so, I am sure Leeds would not have gone on the downward spiral that they did. Yes, a few people would have had to go, but he would have moulded the team he wanted into his ways and got the club onto the kind of solid footing that they have wished for many times since. Clough would have got over his early mistakes, such as bringing John McGovern and John O’Hare into a team in which, lovely lads that they were, they had no right to be. There were far better players already in the team.
‘To have bought Duncan McKenzie was another mistake. That Leeds team had a certain way of playing that was very effective and had brought great results over a lengthy period of time. At its fulcrum were really top players like Bremner and Giles, who liked to get on top of the opposition quickly, grind out things and wear them down. The fans loved Duncan’s flair but he was constantly pilloried by the other players for doing something flamboyant when the practical pass would have been far better for the team effort. You’d go a goal up in the traditional Leeds way and be working like stink to preserve the lead when Duncan would get the ball and set off on one of his mazy runs in which he would beat three players in spectacular fashion before losing the ball or giving it away.
‘The signing of a player like Duncan, and I say this of someone I really liked and got along with, upset the Leeds apple-cart. Discipline, teamwork, endeavour and pragmatism were the bywords before he came into the club, and there was certainly no room in the team for a solo act. Duncan did have his good points. He had this instinctive ability to make people laugh, and he would lighten the gloom when one of the many dark clouds that descended during Clough’s short reign appeared overhead. Someone like Duncan who can take the heat out of a tense situation with just one off-the-cuff comment is needed at every club, and I got along very well with him.
‘But what was happening at Leeds was very dangerous. Under Revie, the disciplined way of going about things had become second nature, so that it never needed to be brought up in discussion. It was routine. There wasn’t much hint of discipline under Clough, and when he was replaced by Jimmy Armfield what discipline was left went out of the club. Jim is a real gentleman who has had a wonderful lifetime in football and, just like everybody else in the game, I wouldn’t say and nor would I listen to a bad word about him. I think the world of him. Many is the time I have been spellbound by his storytelling as he puffed away on his pipe, and when the definitive annals of English football history are written he will have his place in them, and rightly so. When he came over from Bolton to Leeds, he took over a club at which a day had not gone by under Clough without something happening. There was tension at board level, tension at management level, tension among the players, and all in all it was not a very nice place to be.
‘I remember pretty early in Clough’s reign we were playing Queens Park Rangers at home and I went in search of two spare tickets for the game. He even had to interfere in that. “I’m in charge of ticket distribution around here,” he snapped when he learned of my quest. There was confrontation all the time. Soon there was a feeling among some of the players along the lines of “I’m not wanted here, so I’ll go”. Then word began to trickle down the line – this happens in football clubs – that those of a mind to leave should bide their time because this new liaison between Clough and Leeds might not last as long as was generally imagined. Then what had become inevitable duly happened, and he was gone in a puff of smoke.
‘I don’t think Jimmy Armfield could believe he was managing Leeds United, the reigning champions of English football. But the club’s fortunes quickly turned around that season, certainly on the field, to the extent that we reached the European Cup final. Jimmy certainly had a calming effect on the place and the players were much more relaxed, but you’d be hard pushed to determine whether it was the players who got us to that final or Jimmy’s management skills. Jimmy was not a Clough, nor a Revie. He had his own way of doing things. I had two seasons with him at Leeds before he decided I was dispensable and sold me to Coventry.’
Duncan McKenzie adds: ‘I was only at Leeds under Cloughie for a few days before he got the sack, but when he got the boot he came up to me and said, “Young man, keep up those flicks, nutmegs and back heels. Never change.” To hear someone like that say what he did made me feel great. Here was this guy who was a born winner and one of the best managers this country has ever produced saying such things. I remember Cloughie used to say to me, “What are you doing in our half? You’re no good there. You’re a liability! Get up there where you can score goals.” Even when I left Leeds, Cloughie was still a part of me. He never left me alone! He came back to Leeds to try to get me, tried again when I had moved to Anderlecht and again when I was at Everton. It was pretty flattering that he showed faith in me.
‘I saw him several times at Nottingham Forest a little later in life, and he would always greet me with some kind of caustic comment. I would give it back and we’d end up in howls of laughter. That’s the relationship I had with him. In football terms, the man was a colossus. Our national team down the years has been the poorer for never having him as manager, but he knew and I think everybody knew that it would never have worked. You cannot take on the establishment and, as sure as night follows day, Clough would have done that. I suspect his stay at FA headquarters, had it happened, would have been appreciably shorter than his 44 days at Leeds.
‘The fact is that he took football clubs from two smaller-sized cities barely geared up for things on such a grand scale – this wasn’t London or Manchester or Liverpool – to the most enormous heights. He won consecutive European Cups with Nottingham Forest, and the vast majority of people would be hard-pressed to name you three players from those teams of his. That is pure genius.’
It is. And for most of his career, Clough was. Yet at least one club will never grasp the whys and wherefores of Old Big ’Ead. ‘Brian Clough proved himself as one of the best managers this country has ever seen,’ says Peter Hampton. ‘It was a travesty that he never managed England, unlike his arch-rival Revie, and it is something of a farce that he and Leeds United should have wasted each other’s time so badly.’
Leading the tributes to Brian Clough on the news of his death, aged 69, from stomach cancer in September 2004, his former Forest player, the then Celtic manager
(now Aston Villa manager) Martin O’Neill said:
He was absolutely sensational and I don’t think Brian would disagree with us either. He would be the first to say that he was the greatest of all time. But he was like England’s version of Muhammad Ali. He had fantastic charisma, unbelievable charisma. Outwardly, he had this fantastic self-belief and self-confidence, but in truth I think sometimes he was as vulnerable as all of us.
One of the great myths of all time was that he was a manager and not a coach and seldom on the training ground. The fact is that every day was a coaching lesson from Brian Clough, and when he did come down to the training ground for a 20- to 25-minute spell, you’d pick up enough in that time to do you a lifetime. He coached during the course of games. His memory was phenomenal.
John [Robertson, O’Neill’s assistant] and I were lucky that probably in that spell from 1975 to 1980 he was at his very best. He was bright. He was everything.
POSTSCRIPT
IN SEARCH OF BRIAN CLOUGH
I want no epitaphs of profound history and all that type of thing. I contributed, I hope they would say that, and I hope somebody liked me.
Brian Clough
It was in the winter of 1987 that the then editor of the Daily Star, Brian Hitchen, ended weeks of speculation when he emerged from his Fleet Street office onto the editorial floor and headed in my direction. ‘Who’s the new sports editor of the Daily Star, then?’ he teased.
‘I don’t know, Brian. I’ve heard nothing,’ I said.
‘You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? You saw him in the mirror this morning when you were shaving!’
In the privacy of his office, he confirmed my appointment, saying, ‘You’ve got the job. You’re a national newspaper sports editor and I want you to make me a promise. Just promise that you’ll enjoy every moment of it.’
There are those who might say that, over the next ten years, I took Brian far too literally, but I was determined to deliver the best for Brian and for the newspaper in terms of words and pictures and great sports columnists. Together, we introduced to the British newspaper industry the concept of the sports pull-out, including an eight-page horse-racing special called Starform in our Saturday editions and an eight-page football supplement in our Monday editions. I wanted new, celebrity columnists, and before long we had the brilliant northern trainer Jack Berry writing on horse racing, David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd on cricket, Mike ‘Stevo’ Stephenson on rugby league, Gareth Chilcott on rugby union and Barry McGuigan on boxing. All were household names with big personalities, and the only thing we were lacking as time went by was a really big name from the world of football.
There was no bigger name than Brian Clough, and his bold, brash, sometimes outlandish views, statements and observations were in perfect harmony with the tone of the newspaper. But before I could procure Clough’s services, there were several obstacles to overcome. First, he was then a fixture in the sports pages of The Sun and no doubt the holder of a highly remunerative News International contract. There was the question of whether he would be prepared to write for a smaller audience and, further, whether he would be prepared to desert an organisation with which he was familiar for one that would involve a journey into the unknown. There was only one way to find out.
I tried to get in touch by phone through his secretary at Nottingham Forest, outlining my plans to her. When she returned my call, her helpful suggestion was that I fax through the contract that I had had drawn up by our legal department. She said she would come back to me once her boss had seen it. Over a frustrating period of ten days or so, my countless telephone calls failed to elicit anything approaching even a response, never mind a decision. But I was not going to be put off easily, and I decided the best course of action would be to present myself unannounced at Cloughie’s place of work and simply see what happened.
On a bright Tuesday morning, I parked up at the famous City Ground on the banks of the Trent and headed for the main reception. As I pulled the door open, an approaching large, rotund figure asked the purpose of my visit. I told him I had come to see Brian Clough and the man, whom I knew to be the chairman, Maurice Roworth, asked, ‘Do you have an appointment?’ When I admitted that I didn’t, he said: ‘Look, I run this place, and if I want to see Mr Clough, I have to make an appointment.’ This looked like it was going to be a fool’s errand, but then, with impeccable timing, the man himself, in familiar green top, his manner bright and breezy, closed in on us. ‘Morning!’ he boomed and I wasted no time in introducing myself and explaining the purpose of my visit. ‘Ah yes,’ said Cloughie. ‘The man with the golden handcuffs!’
A bemused and rather tetchy Roworth tried to engage his manager in conversation about a scheduled meeting, but Clough, sensing, I think, a bit of mischievous fun, completely ignored him and turned to me, saying, ‘We’re just getting ready for a bit of lunch. Do please join us. They do a lovely soup in the restaurant, and then there’s beef baguettes and so on. Find a place in there and we’ll be with you in a minute.’ Well, hell. That was an unpredictably great start.
Soon, Clough and his assistant Ron Fenton were drawing up chairs beside me and we were immediately engaged in football banter. It was light-hearted, fun and ever so convivial, and though I hardly dared think it, the prospects of landing my big fish looked distinctly brighter at this stage than they had when I had set out up the M1 from London that morning. When we had finished lunch, I was invited to the inner sanctum, Clough’s office, where we were greeted by the manager’s dog, Dell. Clough instructed Fenton to summon one of the apprentice players to the office to collect Dell and take him for a walk, and soon the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. But these footsteps were more of a shuffle. A knock at the door. A spotty young face in a tracksuit. ‘You’re limping!’ boomed Clough. ‘Limping? What the hell’s wrong with you? Nothing. Young man, don’t you ever, ever limp near me. Now take this dog for a walk. And I mean a long walk. I don’t want to see you back here any time soon.’ The young footballer blushed crimson and shook as he attempted to attach the dog’s lead to its collar. He walked perfectly on the way out.
Sensing that there might be some business between Clough and I on the agenda, Fenton made his exit and, seizing the opportunity, I fished a copy of the contract out of my inside jacket pocket and asked if he had had a chance to read through it. He had been the perfect host all day, and now offered yet more hospitality, producing two crystal glasses into which he poured a good measure of whisky.
‘I have thought about this,’ he said, ‘and I have a question for you. What is the length of your own contract at the Daily Star?’
‘Twelve months,’ I said, slightly bemused.
‘Here’s what I want you to do,’ he replied. ‘Go back to your employers and tell them that you are greatly undervalued by being given only a one-year contract and that your minimum requirement is a two-year contract. When you have a two-year contract, come back to me and I will be your columnist.’
This was pure genius on Clough’s part. My interpretation was that he knew damn well that even a one-year contract was highly prized among journalists, much more familiar with one-month and three-month agreements, and that I wouldn’t dare even to ask the Express Newspapers management for a longer period than twelve months, especially as I had only taken up my new role a few weeks previously. This strategy allowed Clough to turn me down without an out-and-out rejection. With the ball firmly in my court, he could turn round and say that I had not fulfilled my side of the bargain. He was, I realised, a politician of the highest order.
It’s an old adage that sport and politics do not mix, but while Clough immersed himself in one of those subjects, he certainly had room in his life for the other. Indeed, he was twice approached by the Labour Party to stand for election. A brilliant perspective on this was provided by Barney Ronay in The Guardian in April 2007:
ANYONE WANT TO PLAY ON THE LEFT?
When football was the workers’ game, it was the home of
charismatic leftwingers like Bill Shankly and Brian Clough. Now, with the Premiership awash with TV money, the socialists seem to have disappeared. Do politics and the beautiful game just not mix any more?
Later this month Italian footballer Cristiano Lucarelli will be the celebrity guest of honour at a UCL seminar called Money, Politics and Violence. At first glance this seems an unlikely choice of speaker. It is tempting to speculate on Lucarelli’s themes (‘At the end of the day you’re talking about a decay of the post-capitalist economy situation’), his insistence on taking the positives, giving 120 per cent and always remembering that left-leaning political theory is a funny old game.
Tempting, but in this case probably misguided. Lucarelli is an unusual footballer, a self-avowed communist and an oddity both in his own country and in the context of our ideologically neutral Premiership. At the top level at least, footballing socialists are an almost extinct breed. This is hardly surprising. The Premiership player lives a rarefied life. Alienated by celebrity and his own vertiginous wealth, bombarded with the tedious superlatives of a deeply introverted industry, it seems barely conceivable he might still be capable of making the distinctions required to call himself a socialist, a monetarist, a disciple of Chairman Mao, or anything else for that matter. Premiership football has very little political content; it’s all on one note. As the former Scotland international Gordon McQueen says: ‘Football is all about money and greed and everyone’s involved in it.’
McQueen played for Leeds and Manchester United in the 1970s and ’80s. He was also well known as a Labour Party supporter who wrote an article explaining his politics in the Daily Mirror. ‘I came from a family and from an area that was and still is solid Labour,’ he says now of his native Ayrshire. ‘In fact, there were more communists than Tories. I just did what I was asked to do. I went to local meetings. I helped with fundraising.’ McQueen was hardly a raving Trotskyite; just an everyday Labour man who also happened to be a professional footballer. This is something he believes is pretty much incompatible with the modern game.