Don’t worry! I didn’t say I believed Swales. I just said what he claimed. There were a few things he said in the interview with me that I knew were absolutely the truth then there were things that seemed inaccurate. I did challenge him on it, asking for the details and he told me it was 1983 when we gave the job to McNeill.
I try to ensure everything I write as fact is triangulated with reputable sources and when I can’t do that I will quote the person who says it to be true. That doesn’t mean I believe him. It just means I’m saying what he said. Having said that the Daily Mirror of June 8 1983 claims the two favourites for the City job are Brian Clough and Jack Charlton.
Swales liked to spin stories.
I do know that in 1983 Alan Oakes applied for the job but didn’t get it though and that in Oct 1980 the Sunday Mirror were tipping Clough to replace Allison as City manager.
EDIT: Just been going through some stuff from June 1983 and there are multiple newspapers claiming Clough as either favourite or a main contender for the job. Maybe Swales was right?
I remember Clough being linked with us in 1983 because, having seen the stories in the press, I baited rag mates at school with the idea that he'd get us promoted and win us the title before Atkinson won in for them. I don't think that the idea Clough could have fancied our job in the summer of 1983 is as outlandish as suggested earlier in the thread, either.
Remember that, in those days, no one took much of an interest in the off-field side of football. We'd obviously overstretched ourselves with the signing of Trevor Francis, but we'd mitigated that by selling him. The team we went down with was generally regarded as one that shouldn't have taken the drop and, though the side then broke up that summer, we were relegated with the fourth-best average gate in the country in 1982/83.
To the outside world, we were in a decent place to rebuild while at the same time making an immediate return, as the rags and later Spurs had in the seventies. Billy McNeill took our job that summer, which was quite a coup. After all, successful Scottish managers were in big demand in England in those days and he'd won three Scottish leagues plus various domestic Cups in his stint at Celtic. That had been enough for the rags to be interested in him when the eventually appointed Atkinson a couple of years before, and he was also linked with other big English jobs when at Parkhead.
So if he was prepared to take the job, why wouldn't Clough have been? Neither would have known the unholy fucking mess Swales had created with our finances. And when Swales told McNeill there was cash to spend, the latter believed it. Clough easily could have done so, too. The difference is that McNeill battled on manfully for three seasons despite the deceit. Clough would have walked within months, I reckon.
I also take issue with the idea that Clough was a busted flush at this point and that he was useless without Taylor. His achievements at Forest in the late 1980s were superb, IMO. He regularly kept them in the top handful of teams in the league (third three times with a relatively small club) and reached numerous domestic Cup finals, winning several, ahead of many better resourced outfits. At this point, remember, home teams kept all their own gate receipts. That created a financial landscape which rendered impossible what he'd achieved at Forest and Derby in the seventies or what Bobby Robson did for Ipswich. And those later, exceptional achievements came without the involvement of Peter Taylor.
That said, I'm sure that peak Clough was with Taylor at his side and their most inspirational period was when they were at Forest from when Taylor joined after leaving Brighton in 1976 until the second European Cup win in 1980. And that makes all the more galling the fact that City passed up a golden chance to recruit Clough in the autumn of 1973. This, rather than 1983, is the glaring missed opportunity when it comes to not recruiting such a legend.
Clough had left Derby in mid-October of that year and took up the post at Brighton in early November, but between those dates, Johnny Hart went on sick-leave and City already knew he wasn't coming back, even though his official departure didn't come until after Clough had signed on at the Goldstone Ground. At least one Clough biography and some media reports at the time suggest that City did hold talks with him, but we opted not to pursue the possibility of appointing him. However, it would seem that he really was ours if we wanted him.
Instead, after an ill-advised dalliance with Ron Saunders (good manager but the wrong man for us), we landed on Tony Book and the latter built the first football team I fell in love with. Book was certainly a creditable performer as City boss (and, Lord knows, down the years we had many who weren't). But the difference between him and Clough is the difference between a perfectly decent local restaurant and a Michelin-starred one.
But then in 1973, as in 1983, Peter Swales was in the chair (Swales's ascension in 1973 came literally a matter of weeks before Clough was available). Our chairman for that period was a vile, egotistical **** who wouldn't make the best managerial appointment for the club because he was worried what it would do to his own position of power within the organisation. Do remember to cite this back the next time anyone tries to argue what a big Blue Swales was.
