Clough would’ve loved the battle of wits with Pep & Co
BRIAN CLOUGH would absolutely revel in battling with the Premier League’s big-name bosses of today. He was a personality manager before personality managers existed.
He would have loved using that sharp mind of his against Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Arsene Wenger and Antonio Conte. I can’t see any of them as his heir though. None have the all-encompassing role he had, perhaps aside from Wenger, whose public persona doesn’t quite hold the same magnetism.
Cloughie was a real dictator, he ran the whole club. That’s not possible any more. For him there was very little aggravation from the board of directors. None of us would even think of going to the board to complain about things. They were more scared of him than we were!
In fairness we had a healthy respect. He didn’t rule by fear, everybody knew how they were expected to conduct themselves. You knew if you stepped out of line you’d get smacked.
He could control the players. If Brian fined you £100 or a week’s wages, it was a massive problem. We had mortgages and bills to pay. He had that power over you.
That doesn’t apply any more. The money in the game has changed the relationship between managers and players. At the top you have a dressing room full of millionaires and you can’t just say, ‘Do this, do that.’ They’ll say, ‘Why?’ You’ve got to take them with you and convince them that what you are proposing is in their best interests.
Clubs are too big and too business-orientated now for one man to govern entirely. Mauricio Pochettino is building a fine reputation at Tottenham but Daniel Levy dictates transfer policy and does the contracts. That frees up Pochettino to concentrate on what the job is, which is getting the best out of the players.
When I took over from Brian at Nottingham Forest in 1993 I had to deal with the nitty-gritty. One of the first calls I got was from Alex Ferguson. He said: ‘Congratulations on the job, hope you go well, now how about that clause in Roy Keane’s contract?’ Roy could leave for a fixed sum because we’d been relegated.
Stuart Pearce wasn’t too sure what he wanted to do, given his England place, so we offered a new deal. But I was negotiating with his agent for months. It drove me mad. He was a great captain and player — he helped me shape the side and convince his teammates of my methods — but he and his agent were a nightmare over that contract.
So modern managers just have to focus on getting the most out of their squads. And Brian had a natural ability for that.
He wouldn’t have been able to manage in the same way today as he did 30 or 40 years ago. But he wouldn’t have tried to. He was a man of his time. If he was of this time he would be different. But a lot of his principles are now embedded in the game. There was a joke about us getting a lot of time off but it wasn’t just something he thought of on the spur of the moment, it was a genuine belief players needed rest during a 10-month season.
He did it to guarantee that every day we came in we were ready to train full tempo. He knew the benefits of recuperation and was ahead of his time in that sense.
He lasted so long because of his success and how he adapted over time. He always remained loyal to those who had performed for him, me included. A year before I took over he said he could see me as the next manager.
But that was him doing me a favour. I was having a tough time at Leyton Orient and he felt that would give my reputation a lift. When I took over from him, he was actually gobsmacked!
There were problems, the whole place was enveloped in depression. They’d had 18 years of Brian and never thought they would get relegated, but we had, and then the Messiah had gone. It was the same feeling when Ferguson retired at United. I can’t imagine a similar situation arising in the modern game though — the changeover of managers now is too great.
Forest had 18 years of Brian and never thought they’d go down, but we did, then the Messiah was gone