Brian Clough interview.

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

There's no wrong or right and you're entitled to feel how you like. There are certain less attractive aspects of Cloughies character but I'd say he has more redeeming features.

The Damned United is rather biased against Clough, I have to say, though Leeds don't come out of it that well either. I wouldn't base opinions on that mate. Sheen does very well as Clough but there was only one Brian Clough.

I recommend, like others, that you watch other videos and especially the excellent film I Believe in Miracles which is about Forest's triumphs. He was a flawed but. much loved character. I loved him without disliking Revie myself. Leeds weren't the only dirty team in the 60s and 70s!

It's funny, I know the film well. I have it on DVD, so I've watched it a number of times. I don't honestly see it as being particularly biased against Clough. He was big headed, and there's no denying it (and there's plenty of journalistic back-up, books on him by people who knew him quite well, and clips on television to demonstrate it) but — as they say, and as he would have said — “if you can walk the walk, you've earned the right to talk the talk.”
Clough doesn't come out very well with the way he ditched Taylor, true. I wonder how close that is to how it happened. We'll never know the inside story.
I think the film just shows the coming together of an immovable object — Leeds United as they had been fashioned by Revie — and an unstoppable force in the form of Clough. That marriage was never going to work.
I read the book afterwards, and I found the film to be fairly faithful to Peace's vision of the man.
Incidentally, some of the extra material on the DVD is quite interesting, especially the interview with Gordon McQueen. Football was much more rugged in those days than we remember it as being.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Revie was a great servant to Manchester City in the great side of the 1950s.

In fact, the tactics that the manager, Les McDowell, copied from the Hungarians, were named after him; the Revie plan, in which Revie played as a deep-lying centre-forward.

However, as manager of dirty Leeds, his outlook and tactics left a lot to be desired.

They were the dirtiest, most unsportsmanlike bunch of shithouses you would ever want to watch. Even the rags have never been that bad. They used sly, horrible methods of hurting opponents, like stepping on Achilles tendons deliberately, but they were never reluctant to use out-and-out thuggery, even right in front of the referee.

Billy Bremner was their captain, and even to this day, I hate him more than any other non-rag. He was a nasty, horrible little fucker on the pitch.

And the worst of it was, they didn’t need to use those tactics, as they were great footballers.

In contrast, Clough's teams always tried to play football the correct way, and it was well known that he didn’t put up with any sort of cheating or bad behaviour from his players.

Clough will always come out ahead of Revie in my opinion.

Cheers mate

That’s really interesting. I know about the “dirty Leeds” reputation but that perspective has shone a light on it. I’m no football historian beyond the era I’ve personally lived in. I’m in my 30s so my memory is really mid-late 90s to present.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

There's no wrong or right and you're entitled to feel how you like. There are certain less attractive aspects of Cloughies character but I'd say he has more redeeming features.

The Damned United is rather biased against Clough, I have to say, though Leeds don't come out of it that well either. I wouldn't base opinions on that mate. Sheen does very well as Clough but there was only one Brian Clough.

I recommend, like others, that you watch other videos and especially the excellent film I Believe in Miracles which is about Forest's triumphs. He was a flawed but. much loved character. I loved him without disliking Revie myself. Leeds weren't the only dirty team in the 60s and 70s!

As I said my view is purely based on the formula:

X is connected to City
Y is enemy of X
Y is therefore a ****

Haha

I know it’s more nuanced than that and yours and Vienna’s posts on here are really interesting, thank you.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

They were the dirtiest, most unsportsmanlike bunch of shithouses you would ever want to watch. Even the rags have never been that bad. They used sly, horrible methods of hurting opponents, like stepping on Achilles tendons deliberately, but they were never reluctant to use out-and-out thuggery, even right in front of the referee.

In Eamon Dunphy's fascinating book, Only A Game, he gives an amusing analogy — he said playing against them was like sitting at your work bench, and having a man come up to you and stick a pin in you. Then run away. Then come back five minutes later and stick it in you again. And so on.
And he said the worst of it was that all those guys could really play, if they wanted to. They were terrific footballers. And they were.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

It's funny, I know the film well. I have it on DVD, so I've watched it a number of times. I don't honestly see it as being particularly biased against Clough. He was big headed, and there's no denying it (and there's plenty of journalistic back-up, books on him by people who knew him quite well, and clips on television to demonstrate it) but — as they say, and as he would have said — “if you can walk the walk, you've earned the right to talk the talk.”
Clough doesn't come out very well with the way he ditched Taylor, true. I wonder how close that is to how it happened. We'll never know the inside story.
I think the film just shows the coming together of an immovable object — Leeds United as they had been fashioned by Revie — and an unstoppable force in the form of Clough. That marriage was never going to work.
I read the book afterwards, and I found the film to be fairly faithful to Peace's vision of the man.
Incidentally, some of the extra material on the DVD is quite interesting, especially the interview with Gordon McQueen.

I read the book a few years before watching the film and really enjoyed both. But I’m a fan of Peace’s writing and any film with Martin Sheen playing the central character is difficult to fuck up, he’s that brilliant an actor.

 

[BlueMoonRisin’]

This was all way way before my time but I have a disliking for Clough purely based on the fact him and Don Revie didn’t get on, and Revie played for City.

FOC blues, am I wide of the mark?

Admittedly even this knowledge has come from reading and watching the Damned United. Which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Cloughie took Forest from the old second division to win the league in 78. He then won the European Cup in 79 and 80 and the UEFA Super Cup same year. He also won the League Cup 4 times.

'Best manager England never had' is almost a football cliche, but it's true.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Cloughie took Forest from the old second division to win the league in 78. He then won the European Cup in 79 and 80 and the UEFA Super Cup same year. He also won the League Cup 4 times.

'Best manager England never had' is almost a football cliche, but it's true.

Pep will better that when we get booted into the Vauxhall conference mate

 

[BlueMoonRisin’]

Pep will better that when we get booted into the Vauxhall conference mate

Haha: )

 

[BrianW]

Clough was a one-off, a unique genius. You can't write rules for guys like that. It's like picking holes in Mozart.

Pep is a genius too, but he lacks Clough's eccentricities. Maybe if you somehow cloned Pep and Ballotelli into one person, you might get near.

There will never be another Brian Clough. They just don't breed characters like that anymore, and if you did they would not get on.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Clough was a one-off, a unique genius. You can't write rules for guys like that. It's like picking holes in Mozart.

Pep is a genius too, but he lacks Clough's eccentricities. Maybe if you somehow cloned Pep and Ballotelli into one person, you might get near.

There will never be another Brian Clough. They just don't breed characters like that anymore, and if you did they would not get on.

Above all, Taylor and he took fairly good footballers — goodish, but no more than that — and got them playing out of their skins. Gemmill, Woodcock, Withe — they were on fire, especially in the 1977-78 season. That was the Clough/Taylor effect.

I'll always love them for absolutely obliterating United at OT that year.