'I wanted to do something you hadn’t done': Brian Clough, Don Revie and Leeds United - 50 years on

Half a century ago today, time was called on one of the most combustible and short-lived spells in football management - and certainly the most regaled - as Brian Clough and Leeds United parted company after 44 days.

Clough was sacked, to be precise. In the event, his fall did not boil down to politics, but personalities. Two very different ones. Brian Howard Clough and Donald George Revie.

Both sons of Middlesbrough they may have been, but that’s where the similarities ended. Clough disliked Revie and the feeling was very much mutual.

That much was evident when the North Riding men sat next to each other in the Yorkshire Television studios in Leeds - just hours after Clough’s axing.

That ‘Calendar Special’ entitled ‘Goodbye Mr Clough’ and introduced by the late Austin Mitchell produced one of the most remarkable pieces of sporting theatre ever aired on British television. It was box office, quite simply - right down to the body language of two protagonists in Clough and Revie and not just the words that came out of their mouths.

Clough stated that Leeds, under Revie, represented ‘everything good about the game and everything that was wrong’.

He wanted his Leeds to be more idealistic and less hard-nosed and pragmatic. Leeds weren’t just going to win, but do it his way. Winning wasn’t enough.

Clough’s drive was highly personal in terms of striving to outdo his predecessor, whose brilliant, ruthless Leeds side won the first division title in 1973-74, losing just four matches along the way.

‘There’s no way you can win it better’, Revie remarked. ‘Why not?, Clough countered. ‘Well, I can only lose three. ‘What other hope have I got?’, he continued.

His desire to trump Revie and also lift a European Cup was another strong motivation. That would be spectacularly played out in Nottingham.

Speaking in another interview years later, Clough acknowledged that he tried to shake things up ‘too quickly.’ He admitted he was wrong not to take the sage advice of one of Revie’s backroom staff members in Tony Collins on that particular count.

If Clough’s shrewd assistant in Peter Taylor had been by his side, then there’s a fair chance that he might just have been picked his battles and followed his head, not his heart.

Without Taylor, Clough took on some of the greatest players to have ever played in club football, on his own and some of the most formidable characters in the game. He ‘never got off first base’ as one of them in Johnny Giles put it.

Clough’s opening gambit of ‘Right, you f***ing lot’ was not the most diplomatic of starts either.

Events also went against Clough, starting off with a long suspension for Billy Bremner after his dismissal in the Charity Shield. Leeds lost their league opener at Stoke City, 3-0 and their first home game against QPR.

Alongside suspensions, injuries muddied the waters firmly and the reigning champions had picked up just four points from six matches by the time Clough was dismissed after a special board meeting on September 12, 1974.

He left with a sizable pay-off and a brand new Mercedes. Financially secure, it was at the City Ground where he went to town and not Elland Road.

Clough and Leeds? Like appointing Donald Trump as the editor of the Socialist Worker, as the Football365 website succinctly put it.