Bad start, fast finish? Can PM outlast Cloughie?
Scots star on chaotic 44-day reign in Leeds
In terms of big jobs and disastrous starts, few can compare with the arrival of Liz Truss in Downing Street.
One columnist last week suggested that, given the death of the Queen stalled the prime minister’s first two weeks in the job, it only took her seven days to blow up her own credibility. Seven days, they concluded, is shorter than the shelflife of a lettuce.
It has been an excruciatingly bad start threatening a very quick finish and football fans of a certain vintage could not help but be reminded of Brian Clough’s jaw-dropping spell in charge of Leeds United in 1974. The hottest boss in Britain at the time took charge of the league champions before deriding the tactics of his predecessor Don Revie, a club legend; informing the players they were terrible and had cheated to get their medals; transforming a winning style; plunging down the league; and being sacked. All in just 44 tumultuous days.
One man who was in the Leeds dressing room as Clough did his thing, like Truss, determined to “overthrow orthodoxy,” was Scottish midfielder John Mcgovern.
He was brought in as one of Clough’s first signings, and experienced an atmosphere with more bitterness and backstabbing than last week’s meeting of the 1922 Committee. Meanwhile, team morale fell as fast as the Cabinet’s in the recent days of market crashes, U-turns and sackings.
“When football is good and you’re winning things, it’s beautiful, pure utopia,” said Mcgovern, “but when you run out to make your debut for the club you’ve just signed for and get booed by the whole of the home support you know it’s not going to be easy for you.”
Mcgovern, now 72, couldn’t even rely on his teammates, who had turned against everything Clough, who died in 2004, tried to do. He wondered exactly what sort of decision he’d made to join Leeds. On his debut, a couple of players, he recalled, played him “hospital passes”, when a player plays a ball to a team-mate in a difficult position.
The PM’S first Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng will know the feeling after he was sacked on Friday for announcing the tax-cutting package repeatedly promised by his boss.
Clough arrived at Elland Road with little support – Truss had the backing of less than a third her MPS during the leadership campaign – and then managed to lose what little he had. He binned several key staff, much like Kwarteng sacked respected Treasury mandarin Sir Tom Scholar after three days in the job.
Mcgovern said: “Clough had been critical of the physical side of the game when they’d won league championships, and so the fans hated him to start with. And when I arrived I found the players hated him, too. And they didn’t like me either.”
After leaving Leeds, following Clough’s sacking, Mcgovern went on to win two European Cups with him at Nottingham Forest and says he makes sure to wear a tie commemorating the wins whenever he goes to Leeds.
The chancellor’s sudden sacking on Friday was seen as a desperate attempt by Truss – who infamously promised, in a hastily-deleted tweet, to “hit the ground” on her first day – to save her job. Mcgovern noted that Clough never threw his assistant, Peter Taylor, under the bus.
But if she keeps her job until Friday – a fair-sized if, admittedly – Truss will have outlasted Clough. Right now, she’d take the win.