MAY 2003
I’ve been amazed at the furore about Alex Ferguson’s rage in the Manchester United dressing room that left David Beckham with a graze above his eye. Mrs Beckham didn’t help by encouraging her precious David to parade around Manchester the next day, satisfying the curiosity of the photographers. She should have gone for singing lessons – God knows she needs them. I’ve kicked thousands of boots across the dressing room in frustration. People need to understand this is instant anger at work. You don’t have time and space to control your tremendous sense of disappointment in what is a passionate environment. Fergie had gone out of the FA Cup to his biggest rival, Arsenal, and I relate fully to how he must have felt. I punched Mark Crossley in the stomach after we lost 1-0 to Portsmouth in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Not because his blunder led to the goal, but because he’d spent the night in a police cell earlier in the week after getting involved in some daft incident in Barnsley. Crossley knew the rules and I thumped him. Probably not hard enough. I did the same to Roy Keane, as he hadn’t followed my instructions in a game when he should have been listening. He was a loner at Forest and it was inevitable that he’d fall out with someone soon, so it may as well have been me. He did what he was told after that.
JAnUARY 2003
I was known for putting my foot in it when I was a manager, but not even Old Big ’Ead could top Arsene Wenger’s comment that Arsenal could go through the entire season unbeaten in the Premiership. If there’s one quote he’ll come to regret, it’s that. With his calmness under pressure, his vast experience and self-discipline, it was an amazing statement. I could imagine it being said to a fellow boss in private, over a drink, but not to the media. He should have said he was delighted the team was playing so well, while agreeing that all good unbeaten runs come to an end at some point. Instead, he fired up opposition fans and players, gave the media a juicy bone to keep gnawing at and put pressure on his side. Now I know what you’re thinking – listen to that big mouth, going on about Wenger when Cloughie shouted the odds for years, spouting nonsense. I did a fair amount of that, I agree, and I’m too old to change my ways now. When I was a prolific scorer at Middlesbrough in my early 20s, I’d slag off some team-mates in the local press. I was fed up of us scoring four, then letting in five at the other end, and I’d slaughter our defenders publicly. I was too thick to realise I was getting a few backs up – it took ages before the penny dropped and I discovered how unpopular I was with my own colleagues. But when I got into management, I knew I wouldn’t make daft forecasts about how my team was going to fare. It’s bloody hard winning football matches week in, week out. My bravado did backfire in my final season, when I got Forest relegated. Everybody kept saying we were too good to go down, playing good football, and I trotted out the same line for too long that season. I wanted to protect my players and the coaching staff, so I tried to boost them by stating that we’d get out of trouble. But I started to believe that as well, which was fatal. I went too far down the road of loyalty and should have changed the side around. All too quickly, it was too late and I’d failed. I’d swallowed my own propaganda.
JAnUARY 2003
Young Wayne Rooney is obviously a talented teenager, but we’ll wait to see just how good he is. All I know about him so far is that he scored an excellent goal against Arsenal and that he looks older than his father. They’re like peas in a pod – same haircut, same chunky neck – but the boy seems to have a confident air about him. If you’d told me that he was 17, I wouldn’t have believed you because his physique is so good for someone of those tender years. No danger of him getting sand kicked in his face on the beach. His weight might be a problem
when he gets older, because a strongly-built footballer can get muscle-bound. That turns to fat if you don’t train as hard as you should. Early days yet for young Rooney, then.
nOVEMBER 2003
The attraction to me if I were a bright young manager would be Rushden & Diamonds. Don’t laugh. Look at their solid progress – a narrow miss while in the Conference, promotion from the Third Division last season and consolidation in the Second. Brian Talbot has done his time as a manager after disappointments at West Brom that have probably made him better at the job. I saw them in the Conference, and liked their style and the honesty that characterised Talbot as a player. They’ve got a terrific stadium and a chairman with pots of money who backs his manager. To me, Rushden have great potential. The catchment area in the East Midlands is large enough to attract the crowds, and if you tell me they’re just minnows, then what about Wimbledon, Barnsley, Ipswich and Watford? They’ve all been in the Premiership, and I see no reason why Talbot and Rushden won’t be there in a short space of time.
MAY 2002
Many think my biggest crisis in management came in 1974 when Leeds sacked me after 44 days in the job. That’s crap. I was starting to get it right, but the board lost its nerve in the face of player power. Billy Bremner didn’t like me and made that clear, which was more than Johnny Giles did – he wanted my job but wouldn’t admit it. So they pulled the strings behind my back. One day at training, I wanted to play more five-a-side – Bremner and Giles wanted to go, but I told them to stay on. I was still young enough to play, so they kicked me up in the air for my pains and left me on my backside. I lost my watch as a result. The groundsman found it for me and said, when no one else was listening, “You’re doing the right thing.” Leeds sacking me gave me security for the first time. Chairman Manny Cousins paid me every penny of my contract and I felt like I’d come up on the pools. Three months later, I was at Forest. Now that I had enough brass, I wasn’t worried about failure because I knew I was good at my job. I struggled for the first three or four months as a few of the players were rubbish, but I was given time to sort it. So I never felt I was on trial after the Leeds experience. Any manager who has failed and wonders if he can cut it must realise these fundamentals: relax, do yourself justice, smile and keep it simple. Don’t dwell in the past.
Brian Clough was speaking to long-serving BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster Pat Murphy
