Brian Clough scored goals at a record rate, then became a legendary, abrasive manager
Before he won two European Cups with Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough was one of the deadliest strikers England ever produced, scoring 251 league goals in 274 games. An injury ended his playing days at 29. As a manager he insisted on being called Boss and lasted just 44 days at Leeds.
Clough was born on 21 March 1935 in a council house in Middlesbrough, the sixth of nine children of a sweet factory worker who became a manager there. He failed his eleven-plus but became head boy, and later confessed that cricket was his first love; a hundred runs in a Test at Lord's appealed to him more than three goals at Wembley. After national service in the RAF from 1953 to 1955 he joined his home town club.
At Middlesbrough he scored 204 goals in 222 league games, including 40 or more in four straight seasons, though he feuded with teammates and kept asking to leave. Sunderland bought him in July 1961 for 55,000 pounds and he kept scoring, until a collision in icy rain against Bury on 26 December 1962 wrecked his knee. Among players with over 200 goals in the English leagues, his ratio of 0.916 a game is the best. He won two England caps in October 1959 without scoring, though he hit the woodwork against Sweden. His Sunderland manager, the stern disciplinarian Alan Brown, shaped the manager he became.
In October 1965 Clough, then 30, took over struggling Hartlepools United as the youngest manager in the league and immediately recruited Peter Taylor as his assistant, forming a partnership that would span decades. When the chairman sacked Taylor in 1966 and then Clough for objecting, the board reinstated both and removed the chairman instead. At Derby County, stuck outside the top flight for years, Clough cleared out most of the squad and even the groundsman, rebuilding a side that went on to win the league.
After a short spell at Brighton, he took the Leeds job in 1974 despite having publicly attacked its players and their former manager Don Revie, and was sacked after 44 days. Within months he was at Second Division Nottingham Forest, reunited with Taylor, and went on to win the league and the European Cup twice. He died on 20 September 2004, widely counted among the greatest managers in the game's history.
Source: Brian Clough
