Clough-Taylor – the exception that proves the rule

The story of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor helps to explain why managers very rarely come in pairs. And almost never – with them really being the only exception to this rule – with any degree of success.

Clough and Taylor met as players in Middlesborough in the 1950s. But it was later, as joint managers with Derby County and Nottingham Forest that they co-authored their chapter of football history.

Their kind of partnership has not really been seen anywhere else in football. Taylor had an eye for a player and knew how to blend varied parts to make an unexpected whole. Clough had charisma to burn; the kind of messianic personality that seems to do so well in football management.

When they joined Derby County and later Nottingham Forest, both teams were playing in the second division. Leicester City's Premier League win in 2015 may now be the byword for unexpected sporting success. But Taylor and Clough not only achieved a similarly unlikely outcome, they did it with two different teams. And in the case of Forest, they not only won the league, they also won the European Cup. Twice.

In his book about Clough, Provided You Don't Kiss Me, Duncan Hamilton describes the Clough-Taylor relationship as being like a marriage. The fevered courtship of their playing days being followed by a much deeper symbiosis forged in the crucible of football management.

But sadly, like many failed marriages, it was jealousy that ultimately separated Clough and Taylor.

Having been the senior half of the partnership in its early days, Taylor was relegated to the lesser half as the years went by. His quieter, more cerebral style quickly took a backseat to Clough's bombastic self-regard. It was Clough-Taylor always, never Taylor- Clough.

When Clough was approached by editors to write a book about Forest's European successes, he turned them down. He didn't have the time, nor did he need the money. But Taylor did. As the less visible partner, he had always earned less money and had less opportunity to parley their successes into cash.

Taylor's motivations for writing the book are understandable. Their legend had grown but so too had the shadow that Clough cast over him.

The fact that Taylor wrote the book without telling Clough is hard to fathom. The fact that he called the book With Clough must have made it very hard to swallow.

Clough was an egomaniac. It was this trait that had made him the main man in their double act. Taylor must surely have understood that Clough would hardly look lightly on anyone talking about him in anything other than the most glowing terms.

In the book, Taylor says that he was just as good a man manager as Clough, that he too could read players and understand their motivations.

But the book itself was a cataclysmic failure of man management. That Taylor decided to psychoanalyze Clough was a miscalculation. That he deigned to tell the world that Clough had a deep-seated personality borne out of the fact that he failed his 11+ exam is really quite astonishing.

Hamilton – who as a journalist for the Nottingham Evening Post had unrivaled access to both Clough and Taylor – says that a fissure had already emerged between the two men by the time Taylor's book was released. But it was the book that assured that their marriage story ended acrimoniously. It was sadly also final; when Taylor left Forest to manage Derby, the pair never spoke again.

There has never really been another Clough-Taylor. As their story teaches us, sporting success is perhaps too powerful a drug for any two people to share equally.

---