Clough - Nobody Ever Says Thank You

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Had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours in his company at a hotel bar after the ECWC final,more than happy to pose for photos sign autographs and get the ale in along with whiskey chasers
 


Wayne The Punk said:
How the fuck did that happen? Great for forest, shit for us, great for forest
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The team I used to play for on Saturday morning always went to a pub after the game. After a game in Washington we all went to to the George Washington hotel. In walked Cloughie and went to the bar (the Forest team were staying there before playing the scum).

One of the lads went to the bar for some drinks and started talking to him and on finding we were all Sunderland supporters he came over and sat with us and talked about his time at Sunderland. It was great listening to some of his stories.

Before leaving he insisted on buying everyone a drink. What a bloke!
 
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In May 1983, I hitched to Israel to work on a kibbutz.
We earned about a quid a day, very cheap booze, free cigs, all food, board, clothes, trips around Israel and a lot of letters home.
I decided, one drunken night to write a letter to

Brian Clough
The Manager,
City Ground
Nottingham Forest FC
England

It went something like.
Dear Brian
As a Sunderland fan in exile, please come and manage us.
We have a manager (Alan Durban) who once said "If the fans want entertaining let them go to a circus"
You once said that you would crawl on your hands and knees over broken glass to manage Sunderland.
Please come, we need you.
Blah, blah, drunken bollix.
Forgot about it.

I got home 4 months later, a typed letter waiting for me from Nottingham.
Written on official stationary.
It went something like
Thank you for your kind comments.
Unfortunately I have prior commitments here at Nottingham (they had recently won the European Cup).
Alan Durban is a great personal friend of mine and I wish you and your team all the best for the forthcoming season.
It was signed by Cloughie
One of my all time heroes
 
Cloughie held a talk-in in the La Strada when he was in between jobs (1974-75 time) not long before he went to Forest.

Asked what he would do if he was offered the Sunderland job he said we already had a good manager (Stokoe) and he said the question was irrelevant.
The lad who asked insisted he would like to know what he would do anyway.

Cloughie relented and said he would keep us up.

He would then have a good crack at the championship (Div 1 then)
With the crowds we could command he could sign anyone he wanted so he had no fears about success.
Next season he would go for the European Cup.

No one laughed.
Fast forward a couple of years, Div 2 promotion, Div 1 champs, European Cup x 2
Signed the best in the land.

FFS, what have we done to deserve our fate.
 
T_Bone said:
Dunno about that but he was a loveable character who somehow made average players World Beaters.
I mean, Kenny Burns, John McGovern, Frank Clark and many more.
How did he do it ?
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Journeyman like Peter Withe, John Robertson ran as fast as I can. A real football man. Even now i love watching Clough interviews on you tube.
 
The Real Supermac said:
Cloughie held a talk-in in the La Strada when he was in between jobs (1974-75 time) not long before he went to Forest.

Asked what he would do if he was offered the Sunderland job he said we already had a good manager (Stokoe) and he said the question was irrelevant.
The lad who asked insisted he would like to know what he would do anyway.

Cloughie relented and said he would keep us up.

He would then have a good crack at the championship (Div 1 then)
With the crowds we could command he could sign anyone he wanted so he had no fears about success.
Next season he would go for the European Cup.

No one laughed.
Fast forward a couple of years, Div 2 promotion, Div 1 champs, European Cup x 2
Signed the best in the land.

FFS, what have we done to deserve our fate.
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I posted this last year -
Someone I knew years ago was at a sportsmans dinner where Cloughie was the guest speaker. During the meal the conversation got around to McMenemy who wasn't doing so well at Sunderland. Cloughie said McMenemy had rang him for advice before he took the job. "I told him not to take it" said Clough, "I told him the job was too big for him". Someone at the table asked "Is it too big a job for you, Mr Clough?". Cloughie finished what he was eating, put his knife and fork on the plate, had a drink of wine, sat back in his chair, turned to look the guy in the face and answered "Yes. I'm the best manager in the world and that job is too big for me now. It's the biggest job in football and it will take a nobody to make Sunderland great again, a manager that no one expects anything from".
 
b1gals said:
I posted this last year -
Someone I knew years ago was at a sportsmans dinner where Cloughie was the guest speaker. During the meal the conversation got around to McMenemy who wasn't doing so well at Sunderland. Cloughie said McMenemy had rang him for advice before he took the job. "I told him not to take it" said Clough, "I told him the job was too big for him". Someone at the table asked "Is it too big a job for you, Mr Clough?". Cloughie finished what he was eating, put his knife and fork on the plate, had a drink of wine, sat back in his chair, turned to look the guy in the face and answered "Yes. I'm the best manager in the world and that job is too big for me now. It's the biggest job in football and it will take a nobody to make Sunderland great again, a manager that no one expects anything from".
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Read it a few times and still dont get it. Is he saying Sunderland are unmanageable? There isnt a manager who the fans expect nothing from?
 
Born Never Asked said:
Read it a few times and still dont get it. Is he saying Sunderland are unmanageable? There isnt a manager who the fans expect nothing from?
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He was saying that expectations at SAFC were so high and appointing a big name manager like himself or McMenemy would increase those expectations so much that achieving anything less than 100% of those expectations would be failure. i.e. McMenemy was on a hiding to nothing.
Denis Smith was the next manager, a relative nobody who did a decent job.
 
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b1gals said:
He was saying that expectations at SAFC were so high and appointing a big name manager like himself or McMenemy would increase those expectations so much that achieving anything less than 100% of those expectations would be failure. i.e. McMenemy was on a hiding to nothing.
Denis Smith was the next manager, a relative nobody who did a decent job.
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A decent job yeah but hardly making us great again. Thats the bit that confuses as to what Clough was stating. Plenty of nobodys had failed here by the mid-late 1980s when its supposed these comments were made. McMenemy was actually a break from the usual recruitment process.
 
Born Never Asked said:
A decent job yeah but hardly making us great again. Thats the bit that confuses as to what Clough was stating. Plenty of nobodys had failed here by the mid-late 1980s when its supposed these comments were made. McMenemy was actually a break from the usual recruitment process.
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But the 'nobody' did a lot better than the 'big name'. The story was more about Clough having doubts that even he couldn't make a success of Sunderland.
 
b1gals said:
But the 'nobody' did a lot better than the 'big name'. The story was more about Clough having doubts that even he couldn't make a success of Sunderland.[/QUOT

The story is obviously embellished with plenty of dramatic licence but still cant make any sense of it. Or is that point being a Cloughie anecdote and all.
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