Cloughie article in the Guardian

[Day]

Wouldn't it be nice if Derby County started doing well under Nigel Clough? Visit Pride Park and you cannot fail to notice the photographs depicting past glories. In many a certain, late, leviathan of the English game looms large.

We are talking Brian Clough and the days when he upset the established order by leading Derby County, then based at the wonderfully atmospheric Baseball Ground, to the league title in 1972.

Back then, Nigel Clough was a six-year-old who enjoyed a celebratory family holiday to the Scilly Isles in recognition of his father's success. Fast forward 37 years and Clough is in charge of a Derby side who, despite regularly commanding the Championship's second-highest attendances after Newcastle, stand a worrying 20th in the table. The days when they specialised in beating Manchester United in the top-flight courtesy of game plans dreamed up Jim Smith and Steve McClaren threaten to fade into distant memory.

Shaken off the field by Adam Pearson's resignation as chairman and defection to Hull City – he is replaced by the former chief executive Tom Glick – Derby also look pretty rocky on it.

Saturday's defeat at Ipswich was the third in a row sustained by Clough's side and the eighth in the past 11 games. Despite being frequently praised for the quality of their purist passing, Derby have scored just one goal in five away fixtures and it is perhaps significant that Saturday's defeat also represented Ipswich's first win in 15 attempts. It is also possibly similarly damning that Gareth Southgate was recently sacked as Middlesbrough's manager within two hours of choreographing a home win over Clough's men.

Not that it is necessarily Nigel's fault. Cash-strapped and ravaged by injury and illness, the manager had considered trying to get the Ipswich game postponed. Derby would be a tough proposition for any boss, let alone one whose sole previous experiences came in the non-league environs of Burton Albion.

Clough did brilliantly at Burton but you wonder whether he is almost too balanced, insufficiently manic even, for top-level management. According to those who know the family, Nigel is far more like his famously even-keeled mother Barbara than his dad.

Indeed, one could not be anything but impressed when, having made a fortune playing for Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Manchester City – and, overlooking his lack of pace, he was a lovely footballer to watch – Clough turned his back on offers to manage higher-profile clubs in order to spend the precious time with his wife and small children that the Burton job afforded him.

Many years ago I sat next to Brian Clough, then managing Forest, at a lunch in London and his pride in his son proved a recurring theme of a conversation that also revealed the depth of his affection for a young Roy Keane – or "the Irishman" as he called him.

Refreshing, ego-free, possessing all the right values and reassuringly sensible, Nigel has clearly matured into the man his father always envisaged he would. Now his challenge is to prove that Derby's fortunes can be revived without their manager resorting to the mood swings, self-obsession and tunnel vision that characterise many members of his profession.

Clough's man-management skills seem encouragingly subtle and he has clearly got Robbie Savage, Derby's captain, onside and playing well enough in central midfield alongside Bryan Hughes, newly arrived on loan from Hull after becoming the latest in a long line of players to be placed on the naughty step by Phil Brown.

Mention of Brown brings us to football's ever-changing topography. Who, even five years ago, would have thought an ambitious young chairman would swap Derby for Hull? But nothing stays the same and, right now, Derby, still reeling from the long-term repercussions of losing Premier League status and its attendant financial fall out, looked poised for a fight to secure Championship status.

Yet if Pearson lost a little heart at Derby generally, his faith in Clough appears to burn as brightly as ever. The man who brought Nigel to Pride Park in January as Paul Jewell's replacement certainly could not praise that appointee enough as he bade his farewells last week.

"I have no doubt Nigel will be a truly great manager for Derby County," said Pearson. "Or that he will create his own legacy in the footsteps of his father, Brian Clough."

Every Derby supporter and neutral – if not Forest fans – will hope that Pearson is right and Nigel eventually escapes from Brian's shadow to create a bit of Derby history of his own.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/nov/03/nigel-clough-derby-county-championship

[derbydan]

good article that mate

[Perky1106]

Sums up our season and how everyone's feeling I think.

[derbydan]

Yes and its nice to see it from a neutral's p.o.v too

[vicky-27]

What's wrong here ? no one taking the pee ? someone actually wanting us to do well :eek: blimey !

According to Roger Davies and a few others they say Nigel is no 'pussycat' as a lot of people think he is, he will do it his way and he will be a truly great Manager i'm sure.