Let me start off by apologising to the fans of Derby County and Nottingham Forest. Brian Clough is an idol at both of these clubs and is a legendary football manager. Andre Villas-Boas is so far proving to be so inept at managing Chelsea that he could be out of a job in less time than any manager under Abramovich, and maybe should be so already. So I apologise for now going on to compare the legendary two-time European Cup winning manager to the Portuguese failure, but I can't help but see similarities between AVB and Clough during his nightmare 44 day tenure at Leeds United.
Player power is where the similarities are seen. Clough was virtually forced out by his players not wanting to play for him. They were Revie's men through and through and to see a young, cocky manager come in who had openly criticised them before, was not something they wanted to see. Villas-Boas did not walk into Chelsea in quite the same way, in fact his arrival seemed to create a buzz and sense of optimism around the club. This guy was the new Mourinho everyone seemed to think. It seems to have been proven however that simply managing the same club before Chelsea, is not a short-cut to the same type of success. This comparison to Mourinho may be AVB's ultimate downfall. Roman thought he was the new Jose, as did the players and fans and to put it bluntly, he's not. It is therefore no wonder the players have rebelled and refuse to play for him. He has treated some of the team's senior players in a disgraceful way. Frank Lampard may not be the player he once was but during the first-half of the season he was scoring when he played, but not playing every game. He can now barely get on the pitch. Didier Drogba may be getting on a bit, but in the last two seasons he has still been a major goalscoring force and one of the best strikers around. AVB has persisted with Torres all season to no avail and although leaving rhe Spaniard on the bench against Napoli may show he has finally lost faith in the former Liverpool man, it may be too late for Drogba to save his manager's job, and if he does then he will be sold.
As with Clough at Leeds, while showing rebellion against the manager, at no point have players stated that they want to leave the club. They have both, particularly Drogba who is desperately trying to secure a new two-year contracrt at the club, shown fierce loyalty to Chelsea, because they both love the club. It is the manager and his poor treatment of them that have caused their morale to drop. At no point during Clough's ill-fated regime did his loyal guard of players express any unhapiness at Leeds United itself, just the manager. Clough attempted to get rid of some of Revie's team so he could build his own, just as AVB is trying to do, but both's actions were wreckless and wrong. It was wrong for Clough to try and completely change a successful team, whether he liked them or not. Meanwhile, yes Chelsea do need rebuilding but why is Villas-Boas trying to get rid of Lampard and Drogba, when he has not found ideal replacements for either yet? Torres certainly cannot fill the Ivorian's boots and as for Raul Meireles who appears to be taking Fat Frank's place most of the time, well he has been woeful for his new club. Until the replacements are found and the foundations for a new team are there, AVB should not be thinking about throwing out the old guard completely.
The main similarities I see between the Clough and Villas-Boas regimes is the stark parallels between Leeds' Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles, and Chelsea's John Terry and the aforementioned Lampard. Bremner was Leeds captain, their rock and probably their best player. While Clough tried to change some of the other Leeds players, Bremner was not on his list of those to be removed. He wanted his new team built around Bremner, a figurehead of the Revie era and wanted Bremner to play as his player, not Revie's. The main problem was that the captain did not want to play for the new manager, the new regime and led the players in rebellion, meanwhile getting himself a long-term ban for punching Kevin Keegan in the Charity Sheild, meaning he was not even able to play for Clough for the remainder of his short time in charge. Villas-Boas has had similar problems with Terry. The Chelsea captain has managed to lose himself the England captaincy with his racist comment to Anton Ferdinand, and currently has a pretty serious knee injury, meaning the manager cannot even build his defence around his captain at the moment (which is leading to hilarious consequences with Sideshow Bob and the world's best mid-table centre back Gary Cahill currently trying to hold together the back line). Terry has not openly criticised his manager, like Bremner, but it would be surprising if he was happy with Villas-Boas' treatment of the Chelsea Golden Era players, despite never being under threat of being sold himself.
Meanwhile Johnny Giles and Frank Lampard have similarities in that they were and are respectively, the number two players for their club. Bremner and Giles, Terry and Lampard, the figureheads of two successful teams and that was not something that should have been messed with. Yet Clough wanted rid of Giles, seeing him as a threat, despite being a genius player. He did not want him at the club but had to play him as he could work magic. He did not want to play for Clough and Clough did not want Giles playing for him but he was not able to get rid of him. What Giles did still want was to play for Leeds. This seems to be the same problem between AVB and Lampard. The manager doesn't want the player playing for him, nor does the player want to play for the manager, but Lampard does still want to be a Chelsea player, and as one of the figuerheads of Chelsea Football Club, no-one would want to see him go. He may be ageing but he still scores goals and however hard Villas-Boas tries, he will not be able to get rid of Lampard. At least not until he was found a replacement everyone is happy with, and Frank's time at Chelsea comes to its natural conclusion. If it ain't broke don't fix it, and Villas-Boas seems more intent on pursuing his own personal mission of removing a not broken Lampard, just as Clough wanted to force out the still very much working Giles.
So this is where I see similarities between Brian Clough and Andre Villas-Boas. They are very different managers in many regards, Clough being successful for a start, but there are no doubt striking similiarities between the former's Leeds days and those AVB is having at Chelsea. AVB may very well become a successful manager. Maybe he will be allowed to stay at Chelsea and rebuild the team over a decade, or maybe he will be successful somewhere else. It certainly looks more likely to be the latter, managers do not get the same chances these days as they used to (such as Ferguson for United between 1986 and 1990), and he will certainly not be given that chance while he does his best to desert the older side of the Chelsea dressing room. Clough did that, and very quickly he was gone.
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