I dont understand. Clockstander has said he has mixed feelings about the 73 legend I thought he was godlike. Despite his past. What gives?
May be as he walked away from Sunderland during the season after we won cup as he thought job was too big for him. He's still a legend to me though
The man could do no wrong for me. Took over club in free fall and took the whole town on a magic carpet ride which if you were there, will never forget. No manager in my lifetime has come close to this guy.
I assume those commenting weren't around in 73...if they were they would understand what Stokoe did for Sunderland, hard to imagine anyone having a go at the guy after all this time.
Bob was managing Bury before he came to us he was regarded as very much a second tier manager, which he turned out to be, Cup run excluded of course. The other is an all time legend in the game, we will never know how far he would have took us, but its my guess it would have been a lot further than Bob.
You have been on here for years. I have told the tale many a time off when i used to deliver his papers. All i know is he is a legend. No i wasnt at Wembley in 73. I hadnt started school. My dad was there. He hates foorball now.
You assume wrongly mate if its me you are getting at, I was a season Ticket Holder in 1973. The Man City, Arsenal and Leeds United games were the highlights of 60 years plus following Sunderland. No disrespect to Bob Stokoe he gave us a great season but Clough would have taken us further imo.
I don't see anything mysterious or disrespectful in the comparisons between Clough and Stokoe as managers. Bob just could not get us promoted until 1976 despite having the team that won the FA cup. Clough won about six league titles with unfashionable Derby and Forest and two Euro Cups when only champions took part. Comparing the two from the managerial viewpoint is chalk and cheese. However, Clough hinted to both of those clubs that he was applying for the Sunderland whenever it became available, which was quite often, to blackmail the clubs into doing what he wanted even though he admitted he had not intention of doing so later. Bob gave us glory, Clough could have taken us to where others got.
Well I'm not going into talk about Clough because he never managed here. But I would take you back to the fact that, three times in 1972, Roker home crowds were lower than 9,000. Can you believe that - less than 9,000 at the home of the fabled Roker Roar which had once been heard in South Shields, seven miles away? Alan Brown not only destroyed SAFC, but interest in football in the town of Sunderland. Inside six months, Stokoe had crowds of 52,000 and then 54,000. What SAFC owes to Stokoe is only half the story. The town/city of Sunderland owes him so much more. And it should never, ever be forgotten. As a manager, I thought Reid was much better - but that statue of Stokoe at Sunderland is well and truly deserved. Make no mistake. We all owe him.
My dad dragged him to my bedside when he was visiting one of his friends on the same ward as me at the hospital over on Newcastle Road when I was 14 or 15. The whole ward ground to a standstill while he was on it. Every Christmas I'd had before was all rolled up into one. He wasn't the best ever manager, or even the greatest manager of his day, he was just the most humble guy, a good man and a good man manager, in the right place, at the right time, for both himself and for his club, my club, and he made himself a local legend.
Yes thanks to Bob murray we got the 'big' Malc instead of Brian who said he would have crawled up to Sunderland had he been offered the job, and now this is the mess Murray and Short has left the club in, and we are no further on since 1973.
My comments we not aimed at anyone mate. Not sure how anyone could say with certainty that Clough would have been a success here. McMenemy had a great CV before he came to Sunderland, Martin O"Neil self confessed Sunderland fan and very successful manager simply didn't do it at our club. Where I agree with you on the face of it, Clough is a far more successful manager than Stoke, but so was Paisley, but any comparison with another manager is hypothetical, Stoke DID come to Sunderland and made himself a legend and made the whole town proud. Not many manager of any club have ever done that.
There's also some history between Brian Clough and Bob Stokoe. When Clough got his career ending injury colliding with the keeper, Stokoe was the Bury center half, and he made comments that Clough was just pretending to be injured. Brian held a grudge about that, so it must have been a double kick in the teeth when Stokoe got the Sunderland job that he'd always wanted. However, all that's irrelevant when compared to this I wish I could find a better clip of Bob's run across the pitch.
With all due respect and admiration for what Clough achieved it was mainly achieved in dubious ways when he outflanked club owners and boards of relatively small clubs as he had an attitude of "his way or no way". I recall an interview on a Saturday dinner time football programme when he was at Forest about the vacant Sunderland job and he looked directly into the camera and said he was not interested in managing us as unless he got full control. There is even stories about him turning up about two hours late for a meeting at a midlands hotel the worse for drink.
My Brother was a reporter and had very close contact with Clough in the gory days at Forest..(I actually met the guy myself on several occasions because of my brother) anyway...he did tell my brother once that his wife would never come back to the north east, she was very at home in the east midlands and did not want to move. For all his persona on the TV....his wife very much ruled their household.
So domestically he was no different to most of us on here. He was a total enigma for those around him with the exception of his missus and Peter Taylor probably. One of the first stories that emerged about him was in his playing days when the whole team signed a round robin letter to the Boro chairman asking for him to be removed as captain. Compare that to Harold Shepherdson the Boro long time trainer who allegedly once told Clough that if he would shut up and listen he could be England's next centre forward and that was in the '50s. A character and a half who has us still talking about "if only".
