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| Richard Rae in the Non-League Paper, Sunday 5th November 2000 |
| 'Relaxed Clough on easy way to the top' |
| Burton on Trent almost became
Burton in Trent this week. But the flood which briefly threatened to turn
the town centre into a Staffordshire Venice was nothing to the tidal wave
which overcame Boston in the second half of their FA Cup replay at Eton
Park. Prompted by their player manager, one Nigel Clough, Burton Albion pulled their former Dr. Martens Premier rivals apart to earn a mouth-watering trip to Nationwide newcomers Kidderminster. |
| In
the first round proper Clough will renew acquaintance with former Liverpool
team-mate Jan Molby. From the strictly neutral point of view it's a shame
the game isn't at Burton, but the Brewers will quietly fancy their chances
of at least holding Molby's Division Three Harriers. In Nigel Clough's case, 'quietly' is very much the mot juste because he gives the impression of never doing anything particularly loudly. |
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| Certainly he has never been
one to shout his mouth off, a characteristic which gives the amateur
psychologists plenty of ammunition when, as they inevitably do, they start
comparing him with his dad who rarely used one word when a dozen would do. Hence they would say, his choosing to start and now pursue his managerial career at Burton. Happy to take half an hour out before Tuesday's game, Clough smiles a little wearily at the suggestion. "It seems very hard for people to understand that this job suits me in every way. First, I don't want to stop playing. I'm only 34 and if you enjoy football, you keep playing as long as you can." And if it's your team, like the only kid with a ball in the school playground, you play where you want. For Burton, Clough as he always preferred, plays just behind the forwards, prompting, linking, creating space for others, and occasionally striking on goal. Oozing class, he appears perhaps a fraction thicker round the middle thatn during his Premiership days, but he never relied on pace anyway. At Dr. Martens level, you feel he could go on for years. He continues. "Second, I have a lot of business interests. I like to have time available for those if necessary. Finally, and most importantly, I have a young family, two children, aged two-and-a-half, and just eight weeks. My son will only be two once, and I'm lucky enough to be able to spend a lot of time with him - time I wouldn't have to give if I was working full-time." In short, another good word to describe him would be 'content', which in today's driven world seems to be a concept many people find very hard to grasp. So he shakes his head when I tell him about one fan at the City Ground a couple of weeks ago. After watching Forest get comprehensively stuffed by Watford, he turned to the press box in some despair. "We gotta get Nigel before Derby get him," he moaned. "I hear it all the time and I heard it before I signed a new three-year contract here earlier this year. OK, you can never tell what might crop up in football, but for the time being my football ambition is simple - to get Burton into the Conference and establish the club there." "I'm not saying that one day I won't want to mange at a higher level, but at the moment I'm taking it at a pace that suits my life. It's not as if I'm treading water here. As far as I'm concerned, I'm learning all the time." Part-time doesn't mean going home at 4pm, or even at lunch time. For Clough it means two nights a week training or playing, and Saturday afternoon. Anything else he can do on the phone and, as he points out, he has one of those at home. The administration of the club, the day-to-day financial juggling and planning, interests him, but only in a detached sort of way, and by and large he is happy to leave that side of things to club chairman Ben Robinson and his staff. |
| In that respect, you feel,
he might be genuinely suited to a really big club, concentrating on the team
in the sstyle of a continental head coach rather than an all-powerful manager
in the style of his old man. Yet contrary to what you might expect, Nigel does not consider coaching to be some kind of art form. Nor is he a supporter of the call for more qualified coaches. "I have a problem with this whole business, which i think is cyclical. If someone like Alan Shearer wants to become a manager, but is told he has to take a coaching qualification, my questoin would be who is teaching him? "So England bring in Sven Goran Erikkson. If he gets results, fine, but I would have liked to see Peter Taylor and Steve McLaren geven some sort of run at the job first." It is slightly disconcerting to hear a player always regarded as visionary, almost cerebral, decry over-techinical coaching. That night the local paper in Burton had put up the headline "Clough calls for culture" in their preview of the game. Yet he never uses a tactics board and generally prefers not to give team talks. "Team talks used to bore me as a player, and as for boards, we never used one in ten years at Forest. Players like things to be simple and to enjoy what they're doing, so I try not to get too technical. "You have to have a certain idea of what you're trying to do out there of course, but people are too quick to talk about "tactics" when nine times out of ten it's down to something individual. "As far as I know the England under-21's were playing the same sort of tactics as the senior team, and they were unbeaten for how long? Manchester United are the best not because they're tactically outstanding, but because they have very good players who work their socks off - they're the hardest working team in the Premiership." Watching the teams warm up on Tuesday night was to see Clough's laissez-faire philosophy writ large. Boston, the full-timers, went through a series of complicated, choreographed callisthenics. The Burton players appeared to wander out as and when they felt like it, kick a ball about in a desultory fashion, each individual looking after himself. Yet after going one down from a disjointed first half, it was the Brewers who finished the stronger. On Burton's beautiful pitch they relished trying to reflect their player-manager, and if sometimes clough was a yard or ten ahead in thought and execution, well, as he said, it's not quite the same as playing alongside John Barnes and Ian Rush. "But what these guys are is totally honest," he says, "They all hold down full-time jobs and so football's only a part of their lives, but they come here and give it everything because they enjoy it, and I'm proud to be part of that. "In many respects they're more professional than the professionals. When they started pre-season training, the most weight any player had put on was two pounds. I've seen professionals report back half a stone or more heavier. "If we get promoted, we wouldn't go full-time. Financially it couldn't be done, certainly not straight away anyway. Maybe in the end we'd have to, but this way things are relaxed, everyone's friendly and enjoying their football, because in the end their careers don't depend on how they get on during 90 minutes on a Saturday. I'd be sorry to lose that." And that about sums it up for Nigel Clough. He enjoys his way of life and he's relaxed. There are hopes and ambitions, but not expectations - so there is no real pressure. He probably will take over at a League club in the end, but as much because everyone expects him too as because that's what he wants. He may not be able to avoid it much longer if he takes Burton into the Conference or they progress further in the FA Cup. Just don't expect him to relish the prospect. |
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