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Dean Saunders on Brian Clough


wazzap24

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Brilliant, Clough did go a bit loopy later on in his managerial career. Was that when he was a Derby player? He signed for Liverpool instead. I know he played for Forest later on in his career but that wouldn't have been a record fee then. 

Edited by PaulC
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The two bits that had me absolutely howling were; 

The bit when AG is supposed to be selling Deano the club and tells him not to be swayed by the money and Cloughie interrupts to say he would be (swayed by the money).

The bit at the very end - in his living room :crylaugh:

Edited by wazzap24
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2 hours ago, PaulC said:

Brilliant, Clough did go a bit loopy later on in his managerial career. Was that when he was a Derby player? He signed for Liverpool instead. I know he played for Forest later on in his career but that wouldn't have been a record fee then. 

Yeah he was at Derby at the time. Chose Liverpool over Everton and Forest, then ended up at a proper club a couple of years later :thumb:

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Well that one wasn't well received by his family or the Leeds players so maybe difficult and only one man can play him. Michael Sheen is brilliant no matter who he does. Clough, Frost, Blair. I didn't see his Kenneth Williams though. 

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6 hours ago, PaulC said:

Well that one wasn't well received by his family or the Leeds players so maybe difficult and only one man can play him. Michael Sheen is brilliant no matter who he does. Clough, Frost, Blair. I didn't see his Kenneth Williams though. 

im sure John Giles sued the author

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I'm sure on the actual live transmission he also talks about clough bringing deano a signed picture of Stuart Pearce to sway him into signing

Edited by Jimzk5
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Looks like not everyone is on-board with Deano's story.

Quote

By now you have probably heard the story that has been doing the rounds in the last few days about Brian Clough, drunk as a skunk apparently, trying to sign Dean Saunders for Nottingham Forest for what would have been a British record transfer fee.

Some belting lines, too, if you like the idea there was a time when the best managers in the business refused to dance to the tune of agents. Clough never had time for middle men (Peter Shilton tells a wonderful story about taking two of his advisers into transfer negotiations and Clough waiting behind his office door to trip them up with a squash racket) and was clearly put out to find Saunders, then at Derby County, had brought one with him.

:snip:

Obviously I’m in the minority, though. It’s clearly fair game to go on the radio and tell jokey anecdotes about someone’s drink problem. All the same I hope the Clough family – Nigel, Simon and Elizabeth, and their own children – weren’t tuning in. I know already what some of the players from Clough’s European Cup-winning teams think about it and I also put in a call to Hill earlier this week.

“It’s a good after-dinner speech but unfortunately most of it isn’t true,” he told me. “Brian wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t crawling on his hands and knees, he didn’t sit facing a wall, he didn’t mention the carpet once and there was no flowerpot… it just feels like he [Saunders] has put this story through a very imaginative scriptwriter and this is what they’ve come up with.”

All rather awkward, I’m sure you will agree. “Brian liked a drink and we all know he had a situation towards the end but he wasn’t drunk that day at all,” Hill continued. “He didn’t do the things that have been said, and I’ve no idea why he [Saunders] would say them. Brian arrived with Archie Gemmill. ‘Hello, Mr Clough,’ Saunders said. ‘Son, call me Brian,’ he replied. It was all perfectly normal. He didn’t really want to speak to an agent, that’s correct, and we were told it was going to be difficult because Saunders had already agreed a deal with Everton. ‘It won’t be difficult,’ Brian told him, ‘we’ll just offer you more money than they have.’ Then off he went up the garden to smell the lavender.

“When he’d gone, Saunders told me Everton had offered him £8,000. “A month?’ I asked. ‘No, a week.’ Crikey. I told Brian and his reaction was ‘Bloody hell, that’s more than me, our Nigel and Pearcey get together.’ First of all, though, he wanted me to do something. ‘Smell this flower,’ he said, ‘it’s beautiful.’

“After half an hour Saunders said he would talk it through with his wife and went home. Then at 9pm he rang to say Liverpool had matched our offer and he would rather go there because his father used to play for them. So that’s it. Brian wasn’t drunk, and it’s not fair. There are all sorts of different Brian Clough stories – I tell some myself, but not derogatory ones, not ones like this.”

Still, the damage is done. That eight-minute clip – “the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me in football,” Saunders concludes – has gone viral. It is an internet sensation and the Liverpool Echo’s headline on Monday was: “How a drunken Brian Clough tried to persuade Dean Saunders to turn down Howard Kendall.” Even the Birmingham Evening Mail was running it. “The following anecdote has nothing to do with our clubs on this patch,” the newspaper explained. “However, it is quite possibly one of the best football stories we have heard in the past quarter of a century.” Or, depending who you believe, one of the more ludicrous.

 

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