New Big ‘Ead – Is Martin O’Neill really like Brian Clough?

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When James Milner returned from his post-World Cup contract negoti – sorry, holiday – the emnity between club and player was seemingly resolved in what was termed an ‘amicable chat’. Martin O’Neill went on to quote the manager who figures largest in his footballing career, Brian Clough, by concluding that they sat down together, talked about it and decided in the end that the manager was right.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Brian Clough stalks the corridors of Villa Park in the way that a fictional Don Revie stalked Elland Road in The Damned United, the book and film about Clough. For a man who had his best success on the odd side of the Midlands, he doesn’t half loom large in claret and blue these days.

In the modern era, with a plethora of Premier League coaches coming from Europe and a dearth of British ones that give good copy (as anyone who heard Mick McCarthy’s World Cup punditry will attest), Martin O’Neill is a sports editor’s dream because not only did he play under Brian Clough but with his wit and his personality, he’s virtually Cloughie reborn. However, is this in danger of damaging Aston Villa?

There is nothing wrong in wanting to emulate Cloughie – well, the glory parts, anyway. He was one of the most successful British managers of all time, and took two unfashionable clubs from the even more unfashionable East Midlands to the peaks of the game. His outspoken nature also endeared him to fans. Brian Clough was a man of sharp mind and tongue and this has led to some of his more quotable lines being set in stone as football’s holy writ. Based on all that, who wouldn’t want our very own version cutting a sarcastic swathe across the modern game?

Well, it appears, not as many Villa fans as previously thought. This summer, the internet has been awash with discord emanating from fans of Aston Villa at O’Neill’s total control and the lack of positive news coming from the club. The lack of transfer activity and the James Milner saga, coming exactly two years after we suffered the Gareth Barry debacle, have left many in a state of high dudgeon.

Ironically enough, it is those qualities that our manager seems to share with his former boss that are beginning to grate on some Villa fans. Both share the same ambition (some might say bloody-mindedness), both are fiercely loyal to their backroom staff, and both share complete control of their clubs. Both men built sides that favoured tricky wingers and big powerful centre-forwards, and both men have made decisions that have baffled or angered fans and not really held their hands up to those mistakes.

Many managers, especially in the latter years of their careers, have shared these qualities, but nobody has fitted the coat of Clough as snugly as O’Neill has. Clough managed at a time when his word was law and being abrasive didn’t matter as long as the result followed. Of course, this is simplifying it a tad, but the manager had enough personality for the whole squad put together. We see echoes of it in O’Neill’s management style – there are not many huge personalities in the Villa squad, and those that do step out of line tend to be punished (we’re looking at you, John).

But is this too simplistic a comparison? There is a danger of mixing up Cloughie the man with Cloughie the cartoon. For all of his big headed bluster, his darker side was forgotten until after he slew of biographies that followed The Damned United. They showed Clough could be a caring, generous man, but he could also come across as uncaring and unnecessarily sharp. People used to say that his OBE stood for ‘Outspoken But Enigmatic,’ and that just about sums him up. His presence in the media shielded the uglier and less successful aspects of Clough’s career, for better and for worse. Clouting fans who ran on the pitch, his petty and unnecessary feud with former colleague Peter Taylor, the times when he seemed to cause arguments for the sake of it. That was just Brian being Brian.

O’Neill, by contrast, is a more circumspect figure. Listen to any of his press conferences and he says a lot without actually telling you anything, and this is a difference with Clough’s style that rankles fans. He always keeps people guessing, and though he has a natural wit and a charm of his own, he treats the media nothing like Clough did. He doesn’t make verbal assaults, he doesn’t splash exclusives across tabloids and he doesn’t hit fans then call a press conference so they can apologise to him.

So what does this tell us? We can say that what we know of each man’s personality means that O’Neill is an ersatz Clough if not an exact copy, but does it do Aston Villa any good? If Clough were in his prime today and at the helm at Villa Park, would we be spending half the transfer budget on silver polish right now?

Well, Clough was successful, there’s no arguing with that. It is pointless to speculate how his winning sides would get on in the modern game, but if O’Neill is the closest exponent of that style, you can’t claim that either man would be walking up the Wembley steps anytime soon. We have seen Villa’s shortcomings in the league, in Europe and in cups, even if in the latter we came tantalisingly close. And we only have to look at the trouncing dished out by Benfica a few weeks ago to see how limited the way that style of play is.

Villa’s frantic rushing certainly can get the blood going, but the style struggles to win many friends even among home fans. Both managers would argue that it’s the results which stare back from the history books rather than how it was achieved, but the world has changed. The World Cup final, for example, showed just how off-putting a physical and one-dimensional strategy can be. Fitness and doggedness are one thing, but for O’Neill to truly be appreciated like his mentor was, beauty has to triumph over strength, and from what we have seen in the past four years, that appears to be as far away as it ever was.

The good news is that Martin O’Neill is not Brian Clough – he’s a deeper thinker who is succeeding in a game which has little time for mavericks as it is. The upward momentum he has bought to Villa has won him many friends and admirers outside of the Villa fans, and the word is that his chairman still appreciates what he gives to the club. The man is always capable of springing a surprise signing before the end of the transfer window that would ally a lot of the sniping, and a number of the players used to get him into the position the club is now in seem to be on borrowed time. Only when we see who he replaces them with will we know if he’s his own man with his own style, or if he’s doomed to always walk in the shadow of another.

Chris Stanley

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