by Rob Bagchi
At first the Leeds board attempted to wangle a payment of almost £500,000 from the FA in compensation for the poaching of their manager, but in the end, after Revie strenuously but inaccurately insisted that he had made the first move and much press disquiet over their mercenary posturing, they reluctantly let him go for only a token contribution. ‘This must be any manager’s dream,’ Revie said, beaming blissfully alongside Croker at the press conference. He then came over like a Teesside Don Corleone with the jowls to match: ‘I also have a feeling of sadness. I have tried to build the club into a family and there must be sadness when anyone leaves a family. [With England I will] try to develop the same family spirit that we have had at Leeds.’
Before clearing his desk, however, he still had one outstanding duty to perform – to fix the succession. Unlike Liverpool, where Bill Shankly, who resigned twelve days after Revie left Leeds, was replaced by his trusted lieutenant Bob Paisley, there was never any possibility that one of Revie’s backroom boys would inherit his office. They all had their qualities, Syd Owen and Les Cocker in particular, but none had the leadership skills to take full control of a squad that took their status as Revie’s subordinates for granted. In any case, Revie had already earmarked Cocker as his England assistant.
Instead Revie recalled the manner of his own appointment and looked to the dressing room to fill the vacancy. The outstanding candidate there was John Giles, whose wit, intelligence and fibre were respected by all his peers. He was also the only one with any experience of management, having been in charge of the Republic of Ireland for the past year as player-coach. He was persuaded by Revie to let the board know that he would be willing to take over and drove to Elland Road to meet them. It went so well that, according to Peter Lorimer, afterwards the chairman, Manny Cussins, phoned Giles with the news they had accepted Revie’s advice and that he would be given the job the next day.
By no coincidence, Revie was at Elland Road the following morning along with the players and, having formally said his goodbyes, asked the club secretary, Keith Archer, to fetch Cussins to announce Giles’s promotion. But Archer was sent back with the message that a development had occurred: the press conference was cancelled and a coronation would not be immediately forthcoming. The delay, it transpires, was caused by Billy Bremner protesting that his credentials for Revie’s job should also be put to the board.
Although the captain had his supporters in the dressing room, most notably his best friend and room-mate Allan Clarke, the majority of the squad felt that Giles, with his remorselessly logical outlook, possessed a steel and clout the instinctive and passionate Bremner lacked. ‘To me,’ says Eddie Gray, ‘the characteristic that made John the more influential of the two as a player – his calculating, dispassionate streak – set him apart from Billy even more as a potential Leeds manager.’ Despite the fact that Giles was the best man for the job, a man who knew the club inside-out and had the rigour and savvy to make a success of it, Cussins and his directors took fright at the prospect of alienating Bremner and potentially losing one half of the team’s fulcrum. They asked for more time to consider their predicament and during this hiatus Giles withdrew, saying he would not be the cause of a split and would stay in the ranks.
Two months later, when the club was still looking for a new manager, the Guardian asked United director Bob Roberts if there was any truth to the rumours that he had argued with Revie before his resignation and had consequently wanted to put him in his place. Indeed there had been an incident at White Hart Lane the previous season when two directors had been left behind in London on Revie’s orders after failing to meet his 5.30pm departure time for the coach. Roberts, however, denied allegations of animosity towards the former manager. But the players’ testimonies, published during the last decade, reveal that Bremner learned of Giles’s impending appointment after a leak from a boardroom mole. Whether by accident or design, Revie’s last bequest to the club had been sabotaged from within.
The board responded to Giles’s tactful retreat by claiming they had always been looking for a man with ‘European experience’ and the former chairman, Percy Woodward, trotted out the party line when asked why Revie’s wishes had been ignored. ‘It’s not for the manager who is leaving to invite his successor,’ he pontificated, revealing how much had changed since the days when Harry Reynolds doted on his manager’s every word. For a board that had lingered long in its manager’s shadow, there seemed to be a determination in their pronouncements to reclaim their prerogative. Advertising the job was a gesture that proved their authority, at least to them, and emphasised that for all his achievements it was to them and not the man who had brought them wealth and prestige that the club actually belonged.
By July 10, two days after Revie’s failed coup on behalf of Giles, Cussins claimed to have received almost one hundred and fifty applications for the post. Within a week he had a shortlist of four, not all of whom had actually applied: Ipswich Town’s Bobby Robson, Bolton Wanderers’ Jimmy Armfield, Motherwell’s Ian St John and, most intriguingly of all, Brighton’s Brian Clough. The Ipswich chairman made it clear that Robson would honour his contract at Portman Road, forcing Leeds to back off, and they did not get round to talking to Armfield until two months later. They did, however, interview St John. After his meeting with the board at the service station at Scotch Corner, the former Liverpool striker was informed by Jock Stein, who had rung up a Leeds director to recommend him, that ‘my man says everything went great and the job will be yours’.
St John, however, knew that the recruitment panel still had Clough to meet. Thanks to the Yorkshire Evening Post, the Leeds public did too and one supporter was determined to stop Revie’s biggest bugbear from getting his job. George Hindle organised an anti-Clough petition and got 400 signatures on only his first night canvassing in the Merrion Centre. The paper’s weekly postbag also measured the scale of the opposition and was divided six letters to one against the former Derby manager’s appointment. ‘I would have thought that Clough’s dislike of Leeds United and particularly the present players has been made pretty obvious,’ wrote Mr H. Adams, ‘and the Leeds board must have very short memories if they can overlook this fact.’ Tellingly, though, in the same edition came Bob Roberts’ opinion that the naysayers could go and hang. ‘There are times when you can wipe the slate clean,’ he said. The board’s bloody-mindedness in the face of the outrage they had provoked and their desire openly to demonstrate their independence would cost them a fortune, not to mention their dignity.
When Manny Cussins telephoned Brian Clough in his Mallorca retreat at Cala Millor and asked him about his availability, the chairman knew he was speaking to the club’s biggest critic. During the past two years Clough had said United’s poor disciplinary record warranted automatic relegation, accused Bremner of tyrannising referees and provoked a walk-out at the Queen’s Hotel’s Yorksport annual dinner by beginning his toast to the guest of honour with the self-satisfied smile and rudeness of the self-styled iconoclast. ‘In spite of the fact that Peter Lorimer falls when he hasn’t been kicked and protests when he has nothing to protest about …’ was as far as he got before being deluged by boos.
Revie’s friend Shankly had a better way of handling Clough’s bombast. ‘You’ve got more chance with the rain,’ the Liverpool manager wryly said of him. ‘At least it stops now and again.’ But Clough’s needling about Leeds got under Revie’s skin and his response to the allegations emanating from Clough’s office at the Baseball Ground was uncharacteristically sarcastic for someone who was normally so guarded in his public pronouncements. ‘We all know that Clough can walk on water,’ he snapped. ‘I think it is time he shut his mouth.’ One of Revie’s later superstitions was standing in his overcoat in front of the dressing room mirror manically combing his hair to ward off bad luck. It left him impeccably groomed but could not prevent his bitter adversary from occupying his own office within eighteen months of demanding Leeds’s demotion.
Clough and his a
ssistant, Peter Taylor, had resigned from Derby in October 1973 and joined Brighton after a month-long campaign for their reinstatement had petered out when his successor and former captain, Dave Mackay, refused to be browbeaten into clearing the way for their return. They spent eight months at the Goldstone Ground, endured humiliation in the FA Cup when thrashed by non-League Walton and Hersham 4–0 and ended the season in nineteenth place precisely two years after winning the title. The Leeds board wanted a manager who would not be intimidated by the challenge of handling the league champions nor by the precedent Revie had set. It is also fair to say they thought they were being clever and were chuffed with themselves that they had caught everyone off guard with their unorthodox choice. In Clough and Taylor they felt they had found a pair with the pedigree to win the European Cup, charm the media, gradually overhaul the squad and build attendances. It would also help to establish the club, their property, in its own right and stop the perception that they were the somewhat jammy benefactors of Revie’s genius.
Clough’s desire for the job was obvious. He felt isolated on the south coast and had lost the patience to work with journeymen players. In January 1974 he had missed matches to go to Madison Square Garden for the second Ali-Frazier fight and had spent most of February in Derbyshire knocking on doors for his friend, the Labour MP Philip Whitehead, before the year’s first general election. When Cussins offered him the possibility of escaping the Third Division and the south of England for good, he took the first available flight out of Mallorca to meet him.
The talks in a Hove hotel went well save for one major stumbling block – Taylor, whose insecurity about his status had sparked the conflict that cost them their jobs at Derby, was going to stay and manage Brighton, the position he’d been filling in all but name ever since they got there. Cussins and Roberts, who were expecting to recruit a management partnership that had only ever operated together in the professional game, were never given the chance to air their concerns that the deal had changed. Clough pre-empted any wavering by marching out of the room at 2 am and, on the basis of a verbal offer to him and his erstwhile No 2, announced to the journalists, who he had already tipped-off to turn up: ‘Gentlemen. I’ve just been appointed the manager of Leeds United.’ He may well have got the job anyway, but he stitched them up, daring them to contradict him in front of the press, rather than taking the chance.
If Cussins smiled for the cameras more ruefully than joyfully after being mugged by Clough’s smart manoeuvre, he masked his unease well in extravagant endorsements. ‘Despite the unfortunate publicity he gets, he is a first-class manager,’ the chairman said. ‘I’m certain United’s players and fans will soon take to him. Although his contract is for four years, I hope he will stay with us for life.’ Clough’s elation was evident from his face and he struck the perfect tone, even offering a disingenuous but diplomatic tribute to the man he had enjoyed baiting for the past four years as well as an olive branch to the fans. ‘I regard supporters as the backbone of any club,’ he said. ‘My aim will be to win the friendship and respect of all those who backed United under my predecessor – a man I regard as a first-class bloke by the way – and to attract more recruits.’ Mike Bamber, the Brighton chairman, was furious with the way Leeds had enticed away his manager and seemingly announced his defection without agreeing a settlement. He immediately threatened to sue. His former employer’s recompense, quipped Clough as he left the press conference, came in the form of Taylor, who was staying behind. It was a compensation package that proved too dear for both Clough and Cussins.
Although the Leeds players had been back in pre-season training for almost a fortnight on the day of his appointment, Clough drove from Hove to Heathrow to catch a flight back to Mallorca to rejoin his family for the last week of their summer holiday. When he finally turned up at Elland Road, nine days after accepting the job, he was too late to attend the annual pre-season party for the players, their partners, the board and the entire staff. Lateness was to become the norm and, though he cited the traffic on the M1 between his home near Derby and United’s training ground in Fullerton Park as the reason, directors and journalists turned a blind eye to the blatantly false excuse, knowing full well he spent most nights in the Dragonara hotel, a mere three miles from his office.
On his first day Clough turned up with his two sons, Simon and Nigel, following his own advice to former Derby midfielder Alan Durban on how to deal with hostile situations. ‘When you’re in trouble,’ he said, ‘bring your children along to the meeting.’ Even his most implacable opponents, he surmised, would be intimidated by the thought of upsetting such charming and bonny ‘bairns’. He need not have bothered – the Leeds players were never going to garland him as he stepped out of his Mercedes on Monday 31 July 1974 but they were not naïve enough to confront him or, indeed, not to give him a chance.
He kept his distance for the first few days, letting Jimmy Gordon, the Scot he had brought from Derby to replace Les Cocker, take the training. He also gave the impression in his pronouncements that his departure from Derby had profoundly changed him. The abrasive and witty Clough of old was replaced, at least in public, by a humble and wary figure. ‘How do you improve on Don Revie’s record?’ he pondered. ‘This is the nightmare I am living with. I will try to do better, try to win the League again, try to win a cup.’ Asked if he envisaged a change of style, he said: ‘Leeds have been restricted by their intense approach in the past, I feel. If a flower has nothing but water it dies, if it has only sunshine, it withers. It has got to have a combination of both to bring it to full bloom.’ So far, so good and the United players responded in kind with Hunter saying the club had pulled together with the players giving 100 per cent to Clough while Lorimer emphasised, ‘there is no doubt he is a very good manager’.
During the first week a few grumbles were heard about the lack of focus and discipline at training but it didn’t show in their first friendly, a 3–1 victory over Huddersfield at Leeds Road on the Thursday. However, the following day, Clough, who had limited himself to the odd word on the Fullerton Park pitch, decided it was time to address the squad en masse. His behaviour that morning and conduct over the following forty days were so extraordinary, several theories on his 44-day reign have since emerged. To his admirers he is an honest man whose fearless character forced him to speak the truth about a cynical and morally corrupt organisation despite the risk of redundancy. Many others think it was just a simple culture clash between a bumptious outsider and some rather precious players. To those less enamoured of him, however, it looks at times like an elaborate joke, the work of a kamikaze manager embarked on a demented project of self-driven constructive dismissal.
Of all the psychological weapons in Clough’s armoury, rudeness was the most overworked. At times he perfectly fitted the stereotype of the ‘I say what I like and like what I bloody well say’ strident Yorkshireman delivering impertinent tripe with self-congratulation plastered across his face. His speech to his assembled squad on the fifth day of his tenure combined the diplomacy of Harvey Smith and Chubby Brown with the unassuming traits of Naseem Hamed and Jeremy Clarkson. Until this point the players’ grievances might have been shrugged off as essentially trivial. There had been murmurings about his timekeeping and the odd suggestion that the pace of training had slackened. The insults that had been tossed their way over the past four years could be excused as the new manager’s famous chutzpah, and even Clough’s insistence on throwing away Revie’s office furniture was greeted with more bemusement than annoyance. They may even have been prepared to forgive him for the things he had said, but now they found that he was unwilling to forgive them for the things they had done. On the Friday morning Clough called a team meeting where, without Peter Taylor’s discretion and diplomacy to restrain him, he committed professional suicide.
‘You might have been wondering why I haven’t said a lot this week,’ was his opening remark. ‘The reason is that I have been forming my own opinions.’ He then proceeded t
o rattle a few of these ‘opinions’ off. To Norman Hunter, he said: ‘You’ve got a terrible reputation in the game and I know you’d like to be liked.’ Hunter looked him square in the eye and responded in kind: ‘I couldn’t give a fuck.’ He then moved on to Lorimer, the king of ‘making a meal’ of tackles and Giles, ‘another with a bad reputation’. Following Hunter’s lead, they robustly stood up for themselves, pointing out the amount of fouls Clough’s Derby players had committed against them.
He then paused to praise Gordon McQueen and Allan Clarke before rounding on his final target, the popular Eddie Gray. The winger’s long-standing thigh injury had restricted him to only sixty-seven league appearances over the past four seasons, which prompted Clough to say: ‘If you were a racehorse you would have been shot years ago.’ Instead of crediting him for his tenacity in fighting back so many times, Clough, a man whose own career had been truncated by injury, waded in with a flippant quip on a sensitive subject and consequently offended Gray and most of his team-mates.
