What would we have achieved if Bob murray brought him here instead of big Lawrie ? ah we can fantasice, he wanted to manage us as well, i would have been happy with the 1st division title.
I may be one of Brian's biggest fans but that doesn't blind me to his 'faults'. Every summer there were the usual stories about his being seen looking at houses in the area, but these stories would ratchet up whenever his contract at Forest was coming to it's final year. Brian would trot out his, 'I'd have walked barefoot, miles over broken glass, to manage Sunderland' and the national press would start to speculate. The Forest Board got panicked into another salary hike. No doubt Brian smiled. This is no sort of criticism. I wish I'd had that sort of pressure to load onto my boss. But Brian was a canny operator in more ways then one. Had we got him though, and providing Peter Taylor came with him, we would have been back up there. Whether we would have stayed there or done a 'Newcastle after Kegan', my suspicion is that we would have failed to build on what we had, as did our friends to the North.
He should have come when we appointed Bob Stokoe, but the never to be forgotten 73 cup final masks a huge mistake made by the Sunderland board, who stood firmly against English footballs greatest ever manager at the time.
Bob Paisley won more European trophies and Dame Alex many more league titles. So what is that claim to be the best ever based on? In my view it's that he put together teams that any other Manager could have but none did. He took clubs with no money, to speak of, and bought cheap players, built them up and when success brought in the cash he used that to improve things further. Unlike Bob and Dame Alex, he wasn't building on success with lots of cash to play with. He built on failure. Any Manager in the game could have done what he did IF they had his skill, (and Peter Taylor). But he DID IT. And with two different Clubs. For me you can leave the 'at the time' off. He is and was, simply, -- English footballs greatest ever manager
Can't tell you how I know, but believe me it's true...The reason Clough didn't come to Sunderland was very simply his wife did not want to leave the Midlands after he got the job at Forest. If we went for him after Leeds possibly we might have had a chance. Also, Taylor was not keen keen a move to the NE.
At the time referred to the Sunderland board, under the Collins dynasty, would have chosen anybody ahead of Clough. Sorry for any confusion as I agree wholeheartedly with every word you say, Stokoe wasn't in the same league and never was, he got lucky which is fair enough, but was found out in his second season.
