Association – the only time a player has ever
won the award from outside the top flight.
“Well, that’s phase one completed” stated
Clough amid the celebrations. “We won’t set
them alight up there, but we might surprise
a few people.” Boy, did they.
“Saturday comes again, welcome or not,
wanted or not. Another judgement day.
The chance to be saved, or be damned”
Preparing for the top flight, Derby splashed
£230,000 in the summer of 1969 to squeeze
the Ley Stand in above the Pop side terrace,
increasing the Baseball Ground’s capacity to
42,000. Clough boosted his backroom team
in the form of Jimmy Gordon, the paternal
martinet of a Boro youth-team coach he’d
often argued with, but always listened to.
“It was against all my principles to join him
- I didn’t like him,” said Gordon. “Neither was
I a fan of Taylor.” But five hours of Clough’s
sales pitch landed Derby much more than
a fitness trainer: Clough called him “the fair-
minded old pro whom I could trust with my
life and my wallet if I carried one”. Gordon,
a tough Scot who’d remain by Clough’s side
at Leeds and Forest until the early ’80s, was
an iron-rod taskmaster. “He’d run the balls off
you,” winced McGovern.
Again, the Rams set off at a gallop: after 10
fixtures they were top. Eventual champions
Everton lost 2-1 at the Baseball Ground, and
Spurs were dismantled 5-0. “We used to play
two-touch football in training most days,”
recalled Rams midfielder Willie Carlin, “and
we beat them by playing two-touch football
for 90 minutes.” Spurs supremo Bill Nicholson
admitted, “They humiliated us.”
However, they couldn’t maintain the pace:
of their next 19 league games they lost 11,
won seven and drew one. The highs included
a 4-0 drubbing of Bill Shankly’s Liverpool – “to
lose to that team is no disgrace” – the lows
included hooliganism, boardroom bickering
and a joint FA-Football League probe into
financial irregularities. Although Derby won
eight of their last 10 to leap from 10th place
to fourth, qualifying for the Inter-Cities Fairs
Cup, the FA-League commission found them
guilty and banned them from Europe for one
season. The wider world would have to wait.
More boardroom blood-letting continued
in the summer of 1970 as Clough encouraged
interest from Birmingham and Greece. That
spring, he’d fanned the flames of speculation
linking him with Barcelona, too.
Taylor fretted about squad depth: “Chelsea,
Everton and Leeds have squads of 16 or 17,
and even with two or three injuries can fill in
without being weakened too much.” Clough
signed diminutive Preston midfielder Archie
Gemmill by winning over his pregnant wife
Betty; she’d disliked the manager’s brash TV
persona, but changed her mind after Clough
visited, did the washing-up, stayed in the
spare room and promised the young couple
a colour TV and a new carpet.
Clough again returned to Sunderland for
another ball-playing defender, Colin Todd.
That meant dealing with his old boss Alan
Brown, another hard taskmaster with whom
Clough had clashed, but come to respect.
According to Derby’s club secretary Stuart
Webb, the younger gaffer played the humble
newbie, “agreeing with Brown’s prediction
that he had a lot to learn if he was to remain
in football management”; when the older
man demanded £175,000 for Todd – a British
record for a defender – “Brian stuck out his
hand and said, ‘Done!’”
Away in the Caribbean, Derby chairman
Longson received a telegram: “Signed youanother good player. Todd. Running short of
cash. Brian.” Longson started to worry that
his manager, increasingly enjoying courting
media controversy, was getting out of control:
“I don’t think the relationship between us,
once seemingly untarnishable, was ever quite
the same again.”
On the field, Derby endured a disappointing
1970-71 campaign, dipping into the bottom
three after a Halloween Arsenal loss. A New
Year recovery was crowned by defeating the
same Double-destined opponents 2-0 at the
Baseball Ground, but the season petered out
into a ninth-placed conclusion.“Misinformed people believe fear was my
biggest weapon with my players. That’s
crap. My teams couldn’t play the kind of
football they did if they’d been frightened”Despite that uneven sophomore season, plus
rising local unemployment as the economy
started to unravel, Derby’s 1971-72 season-
ticket sales topped a British record £225,000.
This time it was Clough complaining about
squad depth – “I’ve said before that we need“IT WAS AGAINST
ALL MY PRINCIPLES
TO JOIN CLOUGH –
NOR WAS I A FAN
OF PETER TAYLOR”
Above Clough
and Taylor bid
Derby farewell
in 1973; Nigel,
Brian and Peter
taking it easyFourFourTwo June 2022 65Brian Clough being linked with Barcelona
in 1970 wasn’t quite as fanciful
as it sounded – the Catalan
club did actually have an
English manager at the time.
Barça had recruited Londoner
Vic Buckingham in 1969 after
an unusual managerial career
that took him from Bradford Park
Avenue to success at Ajax, but his
maiden season in La Liga ended with
an underwhelming fourth-placed finish –
hence the Clough links.How would football history have changed
had Old Big ’Ead marched into the
Camp Nou? Well, Barcelona may
not have hired Dutch boss Rinus
Michels in 1971, which probably
would have ruled out signing
Johan Cruyff from Ajax in ’73,
a transfer that shaped the club’s
future direction.
Cruyff and Clough would have
been quite the incendiary relationship,
though – what’s Dutch for ‘you can throw
all your European Cup medals in the bin’?CLOUGH TO THE CAMP NOU?!
CLOUGH