Brian Clough

[Guest]

Brian Clough passed away today aged 69.

 

It appears he had been fighting stomach cancer.

 

A genuine man with an outstanding career. Only the England managers job eluded him - a mistake by the FA IMHO.

 

Looking around I think the premiership game misses the likes of a Brian Clough character.

 

Condolences to Nigel Clough at conference rivals Burton Albion.

[Staying-up]

Yes very sad news I was very upset today when I heard the news.

 

Without doubt he was the greatest manager ever and the greatest character ever in football.

A real shame he wasnt knighted he deserved it.

I hope they have a minutes silence tomorrow night for some reason they didnt at the Manu v Liverpool game tonight.

My sympathies are with Nigel Clough and his family on the loss of a true legend of the game.

[EFM The Firm, The Voice]

Not sure the Liverpool supporters would of respected it, didn't he say some horrid things about Liverpool after Hillsborough?

[CANV EFM]

i think he blamed the fans for pushing for the deaths.. which i suppose is technicaly the truth.. but the liverpool fans never forgave him as they blamed the police for the crowd fiasco..

that aside he was a top football character, bet he was a fking annoying b.stard as well.. didnt he have a boylanesque type goal scoring record as well till he got injured

[ken]

was on a goal a game average. one of those people that no matter how much he annoyed you, you couldnt help but like him.

 

sad day for football

 

here are some great qwotes

 

"I can't even spell spaghetti never mind talk Italian. How could I tell an Italian to get the ball - he might grab mine" - on the influx of foreign players

 

On Eric Cantona's infamous kung fu kick at a fan: "I'd have cut his balls off."

 

"Walk on water? I know most people out there will be saying that instead of walking on it, I should have taken more of it with my drinks. They are absolutely right" - a typically candid reflection on his drink problem.

 

"Players lose you games, not tactics. There's so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes" England's exit from Euro 2000, explained the Cloughie way.

 

"We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we

decide I was right" - on dealing with a player who disagrees.

 

"I'm sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job, I'd want to run the show. They were shrewd, because that's exactly what I would have done" - on not getting the England manager's job.

 

After a life-saving operation, Clough gets

sentimental: "Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive."

 

and who can forget him punching those pitch invaders

[Staying-up]

Other great qoutes:

 

When asked about Football Holligans he said'theres the 92 Football League Chairmen for a start'

 

African nations were saying we should compete as Great Britain. Cloughies response was 'We are not going to be dictated too by a bunch of spear throwers'.

 

 

Brian Clough 1935-2004 a true legend

[pabird]

Watched him play and he was some sort of striker, even then you could see him telling much older players what to do

Difficult to say if he would have been any good in the England manager role but the bumpy ride would have been great fun

Above all else he loved the game and gave it plenty R.I.P

[Staying-up]

You are showing your age pabird if you saw him play!!!

He does have a remarkable goalscoring record right up there with all the great goalscorers.

I was hoping that when we play up at Burton to try and meet him. Would almost be like meeting royalty.

 

Just hope we have a minutes silence tonight. ManU and Liverpool did themselves no favours last night but not having one and some of the players took off their black armbands. There has been some very angr comments about that on the Nottingham Forest messageboard.

 

 

 

Brian Clough 1935-2004 a true legend

[pabird]

He was only three years older than me

[Guest]

Sorry to barge in on this board, but I came upon this thread as a result of a Google search. You weren't exactly what I was looking for, but having read the discussion I felt bound to throw in a bit of enlightenment.

 

As somebody mentioned, the jeers at Old Trafford were related to Clough's comments on Hillsborough. His book contains comments pointing the finger of blame at the Liverpool fans, but in interviews to promote the book he went far further. On Clive Anderson's talk show he clearly stated that Liverpool fans had killed their own.

 

Now this is not true - "technically" or otherwise. And it is not just LFC fans who blame the police. The official enquiry by Lord Taylor concluded that the primary cause of the disaster was a failure of police control. During the enquiry Taylor also commented on the marked difference between fans, who gave their evidence clearly and openly and most of all, believably, and police witnesses who were regularly evasive, contradictory and unconvincing. Many years later when the Smith enquiry reported back, Jack Straw admitted in the Commons that police statements from that day were deliberatly changed following reviews by police solicitors to deflect the blame.

 

Now a few years back, when Clough started writing for FourFourTwo, I and many other Liverpool fans complained to the editor Matt Snow. Snow showed his own ignorance of the real causes of the disaster, before admirably taking on the task of doing a bit of research. Following this, Clough wrote a very weak and unconvincing apology in the magazine. The impression was that he did so only to keep the gig. Never once did he acknowledge that he had made money off the back of sensational (and incorrect) comments that caused a great deal of anger and upset to the families of the dead, as well as the thousands of other survivors. The irony of a long-term alcoholic blaming the disaster on drunken fans is also galling.

 

Now I liked Clough and was more disappointed by his comments than say the article in The S*n - as I had never had any respect for S*n journalists. His achievements in the game were amazing (although his European Cup winning teams were pragmatic rather than the classy outfits most pundits now "remember"). I personally would not have interrupted a minute's silence for him, but I would have remained in my seat. In doing so I would have shown immeasurably more respect for him than he showed for the 96 fellow supporters I lost 15 years ago.

[pabird]

Anybody who was so quick to throw comment as was Brian will get it wrong big time sooner or later,but and correct me if Iam wrong but in the first police report and certain newspaper reports there was heavy accent on liverpool support charging in minus tickets through barriers that led to an already over crowded section of the ground and the police failing to control the situation

 

Correct me if Iam wrong but the mention of this particular conduct has been pushed further and further to the back

PS very happy to be proven wrong

 

[Guest]

That particular conduct wasn't "pushed to the back". It was investigated in the Taylor Enquiry and found to be wrong. The first police report on the day was that the gate had been forced. By the end of the day, the police had to admit that they had opened the gate themselves. The early press reports, particularly "The Truth" in the S*n were deliberate hatchet jobs.

 

The policeman in charge had never handled an operation as big as an FA Cup Semi-final, and froze. Procedures put in place the year before at the same venue with the same two teams prevented a build-up of fans near the turnstiles. No such procedures were used in 1989. When the resultant crush near the turnstiles became dangerous, the policeman outside the gate pleaded with his superior to open the gate. After failing to make any kind of decision for some time, the order was given to open the gate, but without anyone thinking of the consequences. The central pen was already full, while the side pens were nearly empty. Instead of the opening of the gate being accompanied by directions to close off entry to the central pen, and direct fans to the side pens, the police allowed supporters to head for the nearest pen (the central one) which was already full. Anybody who has been to a big game in the days of terracing knows a bit of a crush is to be expected, so the fans coming in just assumed it was a busy (but not dangerous) terrace. Tragically it was anything but.

 

The subsequent cover-up by the police (aided and abetted by some Tory ministers) is what makes Hillsborough a live issue today. If they had held their hands up and said sorry - we made a mistake, there would be no need for a Hillsborough Justice Campaign.

 

PS Classy comment by Clough about "spear-chuckers" by the way. What a marvellous example to humanity he was...

[Staying-up]

Quote:

Anonymous said:


PS Classy comment by Clough about "spear-chuckers" by the way. What a marvellous example to humanity he was...

Who cares it was still funny though. Clough was a known racist. Forest were going to sign Andy Cole as a schoolboy. When he was at the ground with his father, he was slouched in his chair and Clough said 'Sit up straight Chalky'. Not suprisingly Cole went elsewhere.
Yes Clough should never have said what he did baout Hillsborough. He should have kept his mouth shut but he was still the most loved football manager ever as has been shown in the last week.
If the FA had the guts to make him England manager back in 1978 who knows we mave have won the World Cup we would certainly have had a better England team than what we had back then. Could you imagine if he had been the manager agains Argentina in the famous hand of God game. He would have come onto the field and strangled Maradona.

[pabird]

Your comment appears accurate but as with the later reports ignores the suggestion that Liverpool supporters by the hundreds (or more) were on the limb minus tickets

Finally of course the police lost "it" with under trained senior staff but as usual failed to put there hands up

[ken]

no one has ever clamed clough was a nice man (even him) he was an arrogate biggot, but he gave alot to the sport and should be rememebred for that alone.

[Guest]

At any big game or event there will always be some people without tickets who turn up in the hope of "any spares" or finding a tout. The year before Hillsborough I'd gone to Wembley without a ticket, but ended up getting one for the Wimbledon end from a tout (not that I realised it was for the Wimbledon end as I bought it - the ticket was stamped "Middlesex FA" so somebody had turned a profit on his official allocation).

 

The point is this - if people turn up without tickets to pretty much any big event, with rarely any major problems, how can ticketless fans be blamed for the deaths at Hillsborough? If the pens to either side had been full, then ticketless fans would have been a factor as the crush would have been due to more people being in the ground than there were tickets issued. But the pens to either side were sparsely filled. The Taylor Report definitively concluded that ticketless fans were not a significant contributing factor to the disaster.

[Guest]

Quote:

it--is--this--year said:

Quote:

Anonymous said:


PS Classy comment by Clough about "spear-chuckers" by the way. What a marvellous example to humanity he was...

Who cares it was still funny though. Clough was a known racist. Forest were going to sign Andy Cole as a schoolboy. When he was at the ground with his father, he was slouched in his chair and Clough said 'Sit up straight Chalky'. Not suprisingly Cole went elsewhere.
Yes Clough should never have said what he did baout Hillsborough. He should have kept his mouth shut but he was still the most loved football manager ever as has been shown in the last week.
If the FA had the guts to make him England manager back in 1978 who knows we mave have won the World Cup we would certainly have had a better England team than what we had back then. Could you imagine if he had been the manager agains Argentina in the famous hand of God game. He would have come onto the field and strangled Maradona.

What's funny about racism?

Clough was undoubtedly a great manager, having won 2 European Cups and the League with Forest, and the League with Derby - both middling size teams. But you could say Robson's record with Ipswich was just as good (UEFA Cup winner and regular title challengers with a smaller club than Forest or Derby).