Anyone remember Clough when he left us for Leeds

[Seagull on the wing]

...And got the sack after 44 days there. Here is his 1974 spat with Don Revie on TV,the link leads to part two and three..after that he went to Nottingham Forest...where he famously clipped a couple of fans around the ear...a character,great player,but highly volatile.http://youtube.com/watch?v=yJHvg5c7vPE

 

[Hastings gull]

...And got the sack after 44 days there. Here is his 1974 spat with Don Revie on TV,the link leads to part two and three..after that he went to Nottingham Forest...where he famously clipped a couple of fans around the ear...a character,great player,but highly volatile.http://youtube.com/watch?v=yJHvg5c7vPE

Being an old fogie, I recall the era well. Cloughie's public statements, often of a critical nature of players and the club, became ever more tiresome, and then he was linked in the press with managerial vacancies all the time - does this ring a more present bell?! Quite frankly the Albion support got fed up with it all and I for one was pleased to see him go, though I don't deny his obvious abilities.

 

[fosters headband]

I managed a football team in the Sussex Sunday League in those days and I was fortunate enough to have the help for a short time of Ron Howell with the training. Ron who Brighton signed from Swindon before Clough arrived, was a midfielder who only played 27 games for the first team but scored 9 goals. I remember seeing the change in Ron in a very short time after the arrival of Clough, Ron was terrified of him and from the stories Ron told me Cloughie managed by fear.

 

[cheshunt seagull]

I first heard about Clough joining us on the way back from a 2 week exchange trip to France. Before I'd left the TV and press were full of him and the departure from Derby..he was a guest on Parkinson..front page news in every paper..endlessly imitated by every amateur mimic.. a very high profile figure. In those days news travelled slowly outside the UK and the first English paper I saw was at Gare Du Nord and I was astonished to see a back page picture of Clough in a deckchair on the seafront. It was beyond unbelievable as we were really in the doldrums, a perpetual lower league team sinking fast. Mourinho taking over the reins at Colchester would seem more plausible. Clearly, things didn't turn out quite as we hoped but it made it clear what ambitions Bamber had for the club and laid the foundations for some amazing years to come.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

I managed a football team in the Sussex Sunday League in those days and I was fortunate enough to have the help for a short time of Ron Howell with the training. Ron who Brighton signed from Swindon before Clough arrived, was a midfielder who only played 27 games for the first team but scored 9 goals. I remember seeing the change in Ron in a very short time after the arrival of Clough, Ron was terrified of him and from the stories Ron told me Cloughie managed by fear.

One of the problems with Clough and Taylor in 1973/74 is they signed too many reserve players who were not much better than the poor Pat Saward side they inherited. Certainly not as experienced with League football. I don't doubt that the players were fearful but that's not to say that Clough's preferred method of management was via intimidation. Fear may be useful to some extend to buy compliance, but once the players were accepting of him and his methods, his management style sought to remove fear, not add to it. Did the great Nottingham Forest side of the late 1970s get success through fear? Or the Derby side before? No. The difficulty at the Goldstone was that Clough seemed to be stuck in the first phase, the 'forming' and 'storming' stages. Stopping Ron Howell from talking to the media after his hat-trick didn't help, nor Clough's frequent trips (to America, Iran and Derby).

 

[Diego Napier]

Being an old fogie, I recall the era well. Cloughie's public statements, often of a critical nature of players and the club, became ever more tiresome, and then he was linked in the press with managerial vacancies all the time - does this ring a more present bell?! Quite frankly the Albion support got fed up with it all and I for one was pleased to see him go, though I don't deny his obvious abilities.

Yep, remember it well, the original messiah letting us down!

Talk about a little bit of history, repeating itself.