It is a year since I last read a non accounting or business book and I am really happy that it was a biography of Brian Clough that lifted me from that torpor. I have already reviewed Clough's autobiography (Cloughie: my life walking on water!) and you can see there how much I admired Clough the football man. This book, by journalist Duncan Hamilton is as much about Clough the man as Clough the football man.

Duncan Hamilton was a journalist with the Nottingham Sport when he first started to work with Brian Clough. They stayed together for around 20 years from that point on as Hamilton worked his way up from junior reporter to Clough's retirement from Nottingham Forest and from football.

There are the usual glorious Cloughisms for which the man is most famous in some senses:

Sometimes you win matches in unusual places: often before you put a foot on the field.Page 83

All I want is for the ball to brush the grass: just pass it around. We don't want smart arses . We want players who will do things simply and quickly, and when they are told. Page 89

Clough was asked his view of [Gary] Birtles after he'd gone to watch him. "The half time Oxo was better", he said "but I signed him anyway." Page 120

Talking about new signings, If I find that someone likes a bet, I can watch the size of his wallet. If I find out that someone likes to chase women, I can see whether his fly is undone. If someone likes a beer, I'll get close enough to smell his breath in the morning. Now that's management ... Pages 152-153

No one ever really gets the hang of me. I don't want them to. I want them guessing instead. Page 156

I love this one: Aye, that's him. Martin O'Neill was like James Joyce. He used words I'd never heard of. He [Clough] tried to remember two of them. After several stabs, we decided between us that the words in question might have been, 'pedantry' and 'obfuscation'. Page 157

I'm not saying he's thin and pale but the maid in our hotel remade the bed without realising that he [Brian Rice] was still in it. Page 164

And a telling quote about Clough came from an anonymous player: A word of praise from him in the dressing room was like having a gold coin pressed into your palm. There was never any bullshit. Page 168

If you want to read more of these kinds of things, I put together a page of even more one liners from Clough on my page Brian Clough's Wit and Wisdom, based on Clough's autobiography.

Those insights are far more important that one might realise in that they provide really good insight into the management and pscychological insights of Clough. I believe from what I know and what I have read about Clough that he was a master man manager above all else. Hamilton's book confirms and even solidifies that view for me. I watch people like Martin O'Neill and can see the same sorts of ideas and talents in him as we saw in Clough. O'Neill has managed Leicester City and made a success of it; he has managed Celtic and made a success of it; and he is managing Aston Villa at the time of writing and doing extremely well at it.

I have watched Roy Keane attempting to emulate Clough (I think this and cannot possibly know it) and having done well initially but then having fallen by the wayside: in his only management job in football at Sunderland so far.

All of that is entertaining and well known. That takes us to the other side of this book: the psychological side. The dark side. I mentioned in my review of Clough's autobiography that I had no idea that Clough was an alcoholic until I read that book. I am glad I didn't know. I didn't know Clough had had a liver transplant either: I was living abroad at the time and the news never filtered through!

Surrounding alcoholism and the need for a liver transplant must come something bad or dark. Hamilton deals with this aspect of the book pretty well I think. I suppose the book could have been darker and probably even nastier should Hamilton have wished: he could have told stories of how Clough was drunk and did something bad here, there and everywhere. He didn't do that. I think the reason he didn't do that was that he saw through the bottom of Clough's whisky tumbler to the football man, the man manager and the achiever. There are anecdotes aplenty tyifying the behaviour of an alcoholic: limp excuses for a drink at any time of the day or night, falling down drunk but being categorised as a "character". Those sorts of things. I suppose I am glad I learned these things, I am grateful that Hamilton was so sensitive to them and I am sorry that Clough put himself through such a process. I have no way of knowing what difference it would have made had Clough not been an alcoholic ... neither has Hamilton and quite rightly he made no attempt to do so.

For a significant part of his managerial career, Clough had a partner, Peter Taylor. It is well known that Clough and Taylor fell out irretrievably relatively early in their partnership but after they had won lots of dilverware and accolades. Of course, this was a tragic part of their lives and they never made up after their rift and by the time Taylor died. Clough was clearly affected by Taylor's death and their failure to reconcile their differences and Hamilton deals sensitively with this aspect of the Clough story too.

Clough was a complex character but I think he gave the game away every day: the quotations I have repeated tell us all we need to know about his approach and his psychology. He really was much more transparent than he wanted to believe he was.

Is there any reason why he behaved the way he did? I think so: Clough was one child in a family of many children. That's the second thing we need to know about Clough in order to understand him and to contradict his 'keep them guessing' philosophy.

What about the title, though: provided you don't kiss me? Apparently, Clough was wont to kiss all and sundry whom he met. After one of their early tiffs, Clough called Hamilton and asked him to come and see he and Hamilton said he would do provided Clough didn't kiss him!

A good read: Hamilton has done a good job with this story and I recommend every football fan who thinks they know about Brian Clough to read this book.

Duncan Williamson
25^th January 2009