Robert Exley
It’s well known that football managers have often adopted the veneer of history’s great dictators, while provoking and even welcoming comparisons with them. On returning home to Merseyside to a hero’s welcome, despite losing to Arsenal in the 1971 FA Cup Final, Bill Shankly proclaimed ‘Chairman Mao has never seen the greatest show of red strength’. Brian Clough, on coming into management at Hartlepool in 1965, claimed ‘In this business you’ve got to be a dictator or you haven’t a chance’. The fact of the matter, however, is that dictatorship hasn’t been any more enduringly successful or less troublesome and destructive in the football world than it has in the real one. It also flies in the face of the fact that the managerial set-up of a football club is as much a team effort as what happens on the pitch.
The excellent Barney Ronay, in a 2003 ‘When Saturday Comes’ article, proclaimed that Arsenal’s Herbert Chapman was football’s first great dictator. It’s true that Chapman was the first such manager to run a club from top to bottom, but it would be wrong to portray Chapman as the Ayatollah of N5. His creation of the famed W-M formation which aided Arsenal in dominating the 1930s came on consultation with a Charlie Buchan peeved at Arsenal being thumped 0-7 by Newcastle at St James’s Park and the Gunners’ tactical inability to adapt to changes in the offside rule. Buchan was ready to retire from the game and return to Sunderland to continue running his Wearside Sports shop on a full-time basis, before the player forced Herbert Chapman’s hand into appeasement on the matter.
Also among Chapman’s set-up around the time were the influential Tom Whittaker and Joe Shaw. There was also the presence of future manager George Allison on the board throughout Chapman’s tenure. The fact that the edifice didn’t crumble on Chapman’s untimely death in January 1934 is, if anything, testament to the fact that Chapman never really instigated a Highbury dictatorship, but actually created football’s prototype boot-room of sorts, as all three became prominent in Arsenal’s staying at the summit well into the 1950s. The true end of Chapman’s hegemony came with the death of Tom Whittaker (the last of the line still in active football service) in 1956.
Just three years after this came the creation of the Anfield boot-room when Bill Shankly was appointed Liverpool manager and placed on top of a pre-existing set-up which included Reuben Bennett, Joe Fagan and Bob Paisley. Shanks became something of a quasi-political figure at Anfield. His quote ‘the socialism I believe in, is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life’ was even repeated by the currently maligned Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after his second leadership election win over Owen Smith last September.
Once again, the influence of the boot-room outlived Shanks and lasted at Anfield until the early 1990s, in contrast to, say, Matt Busby who had a less prominent back-room. As a result, Old Trafford’s influence on the game went into sharp retreat on his retirement in 1969, with Man United relegated just five years later. Shanks had his admirers, one such being Brian Clough speaking here to David Frost just after Shanks had retired from football management. Such was his admiration that Clough even got Shanks to address the Forest players in the dressing room against Everton at Goodison Park in the opening game of their 1977/78 title-winning season after coming up from the old Second Division the season prior.
Forest player John McGovern explains that the Forest dressing room was ‘usually sacrosanct. Clough wouldn’t even let in the chairman, but when he swung open the door his face changed. ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘delighted to see you.’ We couldn’t see who it was at first, but he said it like it must be the pope or the prime minister. ‘Bill, I’m just giving them a rollicking, telling them how poor they were, but I think you should do it.’ And it was Bill Shankly….Clough sat down with the rest of us and suddenly it was Shankly, this legend of the game, giving the team-talk for the next 15 minutes, with his hands in his pockets, in the classic gunslinger pose’.
Returning to the Clough quote at the top of the page, he certainly was one for adopting the veneer of dictatorship. Famously, he resigned at Derby County over a power battle with Chairman Sam Longson and made comments about football directors and their lack of knowledge of the game on an episode of Parkinson back in the Seventies. Clough’s self-styled ‘Old Big ′ead’ act too gave off a dictatorial air, such as the quote of ’We talk about it for 20 minutes and then we decide I was right’, when dealing with players who disagree with him. Other quotes which screamed of Mussolini-style demagoguery were ‘I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one’ and ‘Rome wasn't built in a day. But I wasn't on that particular job’.
Much of Clough’s demeanour at the height of his powers in the 1970s and early 80s were rightly seen as tongue-in-cheek humour rather than megalomania. It’s also easy to forget too that Cloughie at his most successful was part of a double-act with the more down-to-earth Peter Taylor, who - lest we forget - didn’t follow Clough to Leeds United for his ill-fated 44-day stint in charge at Elland Road. Clough’s first season at Forest was also without Taylor. Forest’s march out of second-tier wilderness towards European Cup glory came after Clough’s reunion with Taylor in 1976. In Clough’s own words: ‘I’m not equipped to manage successfully without Peter Taylor. I am the shop window and he is the goods in the back’.
The Clough-Taylor partnership broke up in 1982 and, after this, Nottingham Forest were never contenders for the League again, winning only back-to-back League Cups in 1989 and 1990 before Clough’s retirement in 1993. Forest played good football and were managing top-end league finishes. Of course, they were never really expected to be League Champions on a regular basis and Clough was, in essence, bigger than Nottingham Forest, which meant his directors gave him a free reign he’d never have got at one of the bigger clubs such as Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool or Man United – or the England job he was always much touted for. The more Clough became the singular power behind the throne at Forest, the further away they were drifting away from the summit of Football, culminating in Clough’s personal demise and Forest’s relegation in 1993.
In the Premiership era, the ‘great dictator’ was obviously seen to be Alex Ferguson, though once again he actually sat on top of a more multi-polar power structure at Old Trafford than public perception would believe. From the very off, there was influential England captain Bryan Robson on the pitch. Over the years, Fergie also had a string of assistants who too provided their own input, such as Archie Knox, Brian Kidd, Steve McLaren, Walter Smith and Carlos Queiroz. The legend of the ‘Fergie Fledglings’ and the ‘you’ll never win anything with kids’ tale is also embellished somewhat – on the pitch Man United still had the experience of Peter Schmeichel, Dennis Irwin, Steve Bruce, Eric Cantona and Roy Keane to call on and influence the Beckhams, Giggs, Scholes and Nevilles of the team who over time became the on–pitch establishment in turn.
In contrast, even when taking the ridiculous level of hyperbolic argument which surrounds the Wenger in/out debate – Wenger’s current set-up at Arsenal is exceptionally dictatorial even by the historical standards of other top-level English clubs. Not only that, but there has also certainly been historically something within the set-up of modern Arsenal that has made the club prone to successful managers, either by accident or design, morphing into dictatorial figures. Arguably, it’s a factor behind why post-war Arsenal haven’t had the sustained period of dominance over the English game which the Northern powerhouses of Liverpool and Man United have enjoyed.
Arsenal’s first period of success since the abolition of rationing emerged in the late 1960s. Arsenal’s disciplinarian trainer Bertie Mee took over at the helm and his lack of top-level playing experience and tactical awareness was covered by the presence of top-notch coaches in the form of first Dave Sexton and then Don Howe. On the pitch too, Arsenal had a prominent and inspirational Captain in Frank McLintock. By 1973, Arsenal had lost the presence of both McLintock and Howe, who had moved on to pastures new, leaving Bertie Mee as the sole influence on things, with a disciplinarian approach that was beginning to rub a lot of prominent first-team players up the wrong way.
Allegedly, the roots of McLintock’s exit stemmed from Frank instigating a clear-the-air meeting between the players without the presence of the coaching staff, during a poor spell the season after the Double. Bertie Mee misinterpreted this as Frank undermining his authority. Within three years, Arsenal under Mee had sunk to the level of relegation candidates just before Bertie’s retirement. Undoubtedly, the most successful Highbury boss within such a dictatorial position had been one of Bertie’s former players, George Graham – whose authoritarian style even earned him nicknames like the ‘Ayatollah’ and ‘Gadaffi’ among his playing staff (though I doubt ever repeated to his face).
GG managed to make Arsenal increasingly successful despite purging the club of experienced figures such Viv Anderson, Kenny Sansom and Steve Williams, with only David O’Leary and Paul Davis remaining by the time of Arsenal’s title-win at the close of the 1980s. Even promising youngsters who showed a bit too much will to stand up to George found themselves facing a Highbury exit – such as Martin Keown in his first spell at the club and Stewart Robson, who were both banished within twelve months of George’s appointment. George had no time for ‘stars’ who threatened to overshadow him, as seen by his treatment and eventual disposal of crowd favourites like Charlie Nicholas and Anders Limpar.
Even an awestruck David Dein at board level was side-lined from team and transfer affairs by a George Graham who was generally quite disdainful of the young upstart on the Arsenal board and the threat of his players consorting with him behind his back. George’s general undoing was that in the latter years, the young players under his charge were becoming prominent personalities in their own right and less willing to submit to George’s dictatorial streak – quoted in 1999, his captain and the cornerstone of his two title-winning sides, Tony Adams, stated: ‘I would not like to play for him again. I have told him that, but he thinks I’m joking!’
By the mid-1990s, Arsenal were finding themselves heading in the same direction in the League as Bertie Mee’s side two decades prior, before GG’s sacking for bung-taking (which is obviously an offense that a manager can only really carry out if the board give him such an excessive level of autonomy to do so – no surprise; this too was alleged of Brian Clough around the same period). If you look at Barney Ronay’s 2003 piece at the top of the page, it’s interesting to note that Ronay then considered Wenger an exception to the dictator mould in that: ‘Like an ambitious middle-manager, Chapman’s Highbury heir, Arsène Wenger, works hand in hand with his directors’.
Fourteen years on however, Wenger’s role at Arsenal couldn’t be more different. Clearly, Wenger’s greatest period of success at Highbury grew within an Arsenal of multi-polar influence. The top-level players that he inherited, such as the famous back four of Adams, Keown et al, got a greater level of input over team matters than that which George Graham would have accorded. GG’s exit also meant that the door was reopened to David Dein to reassert his influence from the boardroom. As Jon Spurling described within his chapter on Dein in ‘Rebels for the Cause: The Alternative History of Arsenal Football Club’ ‘Once George, who’d enjoyed unprecedented control over which players he signed, was gone, Dein changed the parameters by which future Gunners’ bosses operated’.
The years between 2005 and 2008 however saw an unprecedented level of influence within the club accrue to Wenger. By the summer of 2008, not one of the famous back four or any of the pre-Wenger players remained on the pitch. The club also lost all but Kolo Touré from the first-teamers among the Invincibles. At board level, Dein had exited and Danny Fiszman had significantly reduced his stake in the club. The loss of Dein had been significant in that, as explained by Spurling, around the turn of the millennium he had ‘proved himself an accomplished negotiator in tandem with Wenger’ in relation to transfer dealings both in and out of the club.
Over the last decade however, the club have clearly suffered from a lack of any prominent figures on the Arsenal board. With all the talk about how automation can make many jobs redundant over the coming years, the same level of effectiveness of the current Arsenal board can most probably be replaced by out-of-office email. The Arsenal directors are hugely deferential to Arsène Wenger on all football matters and I’ve actually seen first-hand evidence of this while being party to a conversation with current chairman Sir Chips Keswick and Nigel Phillips of the Arsenal Supporters Trust at the Christmas Drinks meeting of the latter organization at the Diamond Club of the E******s Stadium in 2007.
You’ll remember at the time that despite selling Henry over the summer, Arsenal lost just one game and topped the Premiership table. Sir Chips had smugly wagged his finger at Nigel saying ‘the stick this fella gave me when we sold Henry….and look at us now…because we’ve got a great manager’ (I don’t think I need to remind you how the 2007/08 season actually panned out!). The board’s veneration of Wenger in the form of busts and statutes at the E******s Stadium is also a huge act of short-sightedness and an honour that should never be accorded to someone – regardless of how successful they’ve been - while they’re still in active service, as it makes them practically unsackable – to remove them would be like a Christian church sacking Jesus.
