Spencer Vignes - Bloody Southerners: Clough and Taylor’s Brighton & Hove Odyssey

T here is, as I write, only one club among the ninety-two members of Englands four elite football leagues that carries the name of two places in its title. Born out of a gathering held at the Seven Stars Hotel in Ship Street, Brighton, on 24 June 1901, Brighton & Hove Albion are regarded now as the kind of forward-thinking, dynamic animal that most soccer managers would jump at the chance of helming. Home is an aesthetically pleasing stadium packed with around 30,000 supporters every other week. Awards have been won for the clubs pioneering work in the local community. The training compound is among the best in Britain. They will never be Manchester United or Liverpool, but, equally, Albion, as supporters tend to call them, are light years away from the cash-strapped Burys and Newport Countys of the English and Welsh professional game.

It wasnt always like this. For seventy-two years, Albion skulked around in what might kindly be described as the games shadows, rarely doing anything of excitement to trouble the headline writers. Comedy relief was quite literally provided by Norman Wisdom, who, between 1964 and 1970, served on a committee that talked about things, as the late comedian once described the clubs board to me. Training took place among the dog mess on Hove Park. If Brighton was a town that looked, according to the playwright Keith Waterhouse, like it is helping police with their enquiries, then Albion could equally have been described as a football club of the tired, end-of-the-pier variety.

And then Brian Clough walked in.

Just imagine Alex Ferguson quitting Manchester United during the high-water mark of his reign at Old Trafford to take over at Rochdale. Or Jos Mourinho walking out on Chelsea in the wake of the 2015 Premier League title triumph and joining Southend United. Scenarios like that dont tend to happen in life, let alone football, going against the grain when it comes to the upward career trajectories of anyone with a drop of ambition in their veins.

Except that, in November 1973, one did.

At that time Brian Clough was managerial gold dust, having led Derby County from the old Second Division to the 1971/72 Football League title. The following season, County reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, controversially exiting the competition to Juventus amid rumours of bribery and corruption concerning the referee appointed for the ties first leg. Cloughs maverick ways, success at club level and made-for-television soundbites meant he was the perpetual peoples choice as next boss of the England national team. And yet the man who would later declare himself (maybe with a hint of tongue in cheek, maybe not) to be in the top one of managers chose to join a club six places from the bottom of English footballs Third Division.

As a journalist I had recalled Cloughs improbable spell at Brighton & Hove Albion across a combination of newspapers, magazines and the clubs official match-day programme, where for many years I have served as a feature writer. I met many of the players who were there, getting to know some as friends, and would never tire of hearing their stories about Clough, whose death in 2004 has done little to diminish his status as one of English footballs iconic figures. Some of those stories showed him in a positive light, others not so, as you might expect of a true original who revelled in dividing opinion. But they were never dull. That in itself leaves me scratching my head as to why it took so long to think of this remarkable sporting odyssey as a book. Sometimes the best ideas are staring you in the face the whole time.

Is the world ready for another book about Brian Clough? Thats a question I asked myself several times before committing pen to paper, or rather hand to laptop. The answer always remained the same, and heres why. Every nook of Cloughs career both as a player and manager has been thoroughly dissected on celluloid and in book form, with one exception nobody has ever focused solely on his time at Brighton & Hove Albion. In many ways, thats the most intriguing part. What motivates a man at the top of his game to take a job which appears so monstrously beneath him? It made little sense back in 1973, even allowing for Cloughs trademark eccentricities. It makes more sense to me now that Ive researched and written this book. Even so, no matter how I probed Cloughs thought processes for logic, the whole affair has the word surreal written through it like a stick of Brighton Rock.

Whats more, as good as the majority of books, films and documentaries about Old Big Head have been, Ive found myself becoming increasingly riled at the degree of artistic licence taken with elements of the Brian Clough story. The footnote traditionally occupied by Brighton & Hove Albion tells of a club low on resources and going nowhere. That simply isnt true. After seventy-two years on skid row, Albion had an ambitious new chairman in place who was prepared to spend money. Lots of it. In fact, Mike Bamber, for that was his name, would part with more cash in transfer fees during Cloughs nine months in charge than any other chairman outside the First Division (the equivalent of todays Premier League), not to mention several inside it.

It has also become de rigueur to talk up Cloughs admittedly remarkable achievements at Nottingham Forest by playing down the stature of the East Midlands club that he inherited in January 1975, six months after his departure from Brighton and following an ill-fated 44-day spell as manager of Leeds United. In 1967, Forest had come within touching distance of winning the Football League and FA Cup double. That would have been their third FA Cup triumph, the second having arrived as recently as 1959. Forest may have been in the doldrums when Clough took over, but such a CV doesnt square with my understanding of what constitutes a small provincial football club. That, however, is what they have become in the creative rush to laud him.

This is the story of what happened when Brian Clough, together with his assistant, partner, shadow call Peter Taylor whatever you will went to manage a genuinely small provincial football club. In 1973, Albion had never finished higher than twelfth in the old Second Division or progressed beyond the fifth round of the FA Cup. But something was beginning to stir on the south coast of England. Clough would later argue that the task of achieving success at Brighton was like asking Lester Piggott to win the Derby on a Skegness donkey a quote which leads me to surmise that he either didnt comprehend or didnt wish to acknowledge the clubs untapped potential. Indeed, What would have happened had Brian Clough stuck around? is a question that has long fascinated Albion supporters of a certain age, especially in light of what transpired at Nottingham Forest.

Brighton & Hove Albion was far from Brian Clough and Peter Taylors finest hour. It bore witness to the first major fracture in their relationship, a trial separation in a union that ultimately dissolved into acrimony, bitterness and regret despite yielding silverware aplenty. However, neither was their stint beside the seaside the complete washout it is often portrayed as. Quite the contrary. In fact, it would, in the long run, prove to be the making of a football club.

Spencer Vignes
Cardiff, Wales
September 2018