Everything I read about this coaching combination is pretty amazing. These two English coaches must be candidates for the greatest coaching team of all time.=d>

FFA should mandate prospective coaches to do all their coaching badges, up to Pro LIcence, and then have these two geniuses instruct particpants in running an effective club, if they were still alive.

They both had vices too. Taylor was a compulsive gambler. Clough was an alcoholic, which eventually clouded his judgement.

Arthur wrote

I was going to say how it was good to see how Brian Clough's legacy must still have an influence over Forest.

Clough and Taylor actually had some hard nuts in their team, in particular Lloyd and Burns.

But they were able to turn them into very disciplined players conceding few free kicks, the teams Clough/Taylor constructed where always ball playing teams though and they were able to identify players of great technical ability.


I took the liberty of cutting and pasting a comment of Arthur's for this thread.

Hope you don't mind mate.

Well before my time but their results speak for themselves.

Also, 'The Damned United' was thoroughly enjoyable :lol:

"If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there." On the importance of passing to feet.


[youtube]6sdvoqb3JnU[/youtube]

Edited by Arthur: 9/1/2014 09:47:39 PM

One of the many amazing things about the Clough/Taylor combo was they always sold players at their peak. They never seemed to match their performances with Forest after they left.

Conversely, they signed players that nobody else saw talent in, usually before they peaked.

Taylor said that Dave Mackay would've benefitted their team. Clough convinced him to join Forest, because the had a couple of young blokes to do a lot of the marking and ball winning, whilst he distributed the ball from the back. NF won titles.

I'm not sure if Mackay was present when they won two successive European Cups. Winning the European Cups was amazing, because the Forest budget was tiny compared to the big European clubs. To win tewo in a row , with a little club, was extraordinary!=d>

Arsene Wenger and SAF are also good at selling players as they consider their best days are behind them. The difference between Wenger and SAF on the done hand, and Clough/Taylor on the other, is that they rely on data to support what they 'think'.

Clough was a freak. He could remember so much of the minute detail game that occurred in every game, he didn't need stats. His players were amazed at the detail he could remember about their individual games. Clough was a genius.

However, SAF got it wrong with Jaap Staam. He got the stats wrong, thinking Staam was making less tackles. He sold him to a big Italian club, where he was a key ingredient in a successful UEFA CL campaign. Clough only started to get things wrong as alcoholism clouded his judgement.

The Damned United was good wasn't it?

The other amazing phenomenon with Clough/Taylor was Taylor's extraordinary talent identification ability. He would appear at games with the fans on the terraces, and appraise a prospective player's value to Forest by half time and leave.

Then he and Clough would sign them before anybody else had any idea they had talent.

Yeah it was great! Not sure it was entirely factual, but a great watch.

Those of us who had the pleasure will never forget - Brian was the greatest. Nobody like that has come along before and it's not possible for someone to do it again. He took us from a small provincial club (albeit one with one of the most stellar early histories in football being responsible for everything from the invention of shin guards to the creation of AC Milan to Arsenals choice of red) to double European champions.

The thing about watching Cloughie live was he would rarely if ever change tactics or formation during a match and it was the incredible self-belief that led this. He genuinely believed that it was up to other managers to plan the match around him. His changes were usually proactive rather than reactionary. I won't go into then unique ability of him and PT to identify talent and sign them up in a flash - there's enough literature and stories out there definitely worth a read (and would make a hellofa better movie than the Damned United). As Decentric pointed out though, players were often sold at the peak never to perform quite the same elsewhere. Brian never let a player become greater than the team itself and had no problem shuffling them off, his son excepted.

Cloughie's Forest Mark 1 was a real life Hollywood story of a bunch of misfits and young talents come together to take on the world and beat them. And I don't reckon it could happen again given the round robin nature of the Champions League.

Some clubs wear their history as a badge of pride propelling them forward. For us, what Cloughie did weighs us down and nobody taking on the job at the City Ground will ever be able to match that. We're the ugly poor bloke that scored a horny supermodel on the rebound for a hot weekend, forced to spend the rest of eternity rooting Plain Janes with the memory of what it was like. In the world of 2014 only a fortune is going to make that bloke able to pull something similar in future, so if new owner Fawaz is really as wealthy as reported we could be in with a shout.


Edited by Cloughie: 9/1/2014 06:49:01 PM

Better not let Paulc read this . He'll end up losing his head . Cloughies shadow still hangs over forest. The man was an absolute genius

Great subject D you've inspired me.

Classic example of the sometimes overbearing legacy - the Reds were giving it good to Harry's QPR on Boxing Day and the backs/wingers were switching play left to right with pinpoint aerial passes opening them up which is the norm in modern football. Notwithstanding the 2 nil scoreline I heard one of the older blokes yell out to Abdoun "On the deck son. keep it on the deck" followed by a scattered muttering of agreement.
The game was being won, but not necessarily in the right style according to many.

As much as SAF or Jose have had success, I can't think of a stylistic imprint that any present great managers could leave on a club.

Thanks mate.

I confused his tenure with Derby and NF.

Many would agree he was the greatest, but working in partnership with Peter Taylor saw him at his zenith.

I can never get enough of books written by or about Clough - biographies, autobiographies, references from other books by top football writers, like Simon Kuper and Jonathon Wilson.

Clough didn't think tactics were important. He thought players make mistakes. Having good players was paramount. Taylor could identify talent in players nobody else could see.=d>

This is where Clough differs from contemporary coaches. In his days, tactics by opposition coaches were simplistic.

As he moved towards the end of his coaching career and alcoholism effected his judgement, other coaches started to study Forest's tactics assiduously. Plans were made to counter what Forest did.

As you say, his self-belief was astonishing. Clough hated long ball football. He thought he could train monkeys to play kick and rush football and squeeze and press defences to make mistakes! :lol:

Clough believed in players enjoying themselves and expressing themselves on the pitch. He loved passing and technical football. Even though told by other coaches his players weren't fit, he said they didn't have to be to be play technical football on the deck, compared to some of the kick and rush rubbish he had to play against.:lol:

Clough had great respect for SAF and Arsene Wenger. He got on well with both of them. His major criticism of Wenger is that his players are ill-disciplined. Clough contends that Wenger by constantly saying he didn't see incidents where his players suffered yellow and red cards, gave carte blanche for his players to suffer suspensions, which ultimately cost Wenger.

Clough insisted all his players respect the referees. He was constantly told by refs they wished all teams were like Forest to adjudicate. Inadvertently, Forest probably received more leniency from referees subconsciously.






Edited by Decentric: 10/1/2014 02:00:34 PM

A few things about Clough that show the qualities of the man (but also couldn't be exercised at elite level anymore because players have the power now):

- if a player was booked for dissent, Clough would fine them as if they had been red carded.
- he always called players by their 'Sunday name', ie, Teddy Sheringham was always Edward.
- he abhorred the sight of the ball going above head height, he actually dropped players on occasion for doing it too often



A bit of dramatic license, but basically accurate throughout. A few of Cloughies dodgy antics left out.

Amazing from Div 2 to European Cup winners in 3 years

Add to that Roy Keane recalling Clough punching him in the face post game after Keane had made a costly mistake that led to Forest conceding an equalizer. Although in regard to Clough referring to players by their 'Sunday name', Keane wrote in his book that Clough never bothered to learn his name for a while as he just referred to him as 'Irishman' :lol:

I'm not sure if Alan Davidson is still kicking around SMFC (last I knew he was coaching one of the women's teams), but he played for Forest for a couple of seasons and has a few ripping Clough stories. One involves Brian cooking him Christmas dinner one year :lol:

Ian Wallace, one of Clough's costly non-Taylor scouted signings, once told me that the day he signed Clough had Wallace drive him all round Nottingham on the pretense that he was introducing him to the city - it was really because he had had too many drinks that afternoon and knew that he couldn't go back to the club to pick up his car until he had sobered up.

:lol: