Brian Clough legacy which lives on at the Amex

Actually, there are probably not many parts of it he would have recognised even when he was Albion manager in the mid-1970s, so little time did he spend here.

The struggling, third-tier club of which he took charge, amid widespread amazement, in November 1973 has certainly changed an awful lot since then.

Journalist, author and Albion fan Spencer Vignes has immersed himself in the short-lived Clough era and spoken to a host of people who were there.

The result is his new book Bloody Southerners – Clough And Taylor’s Brighton And Hove Odyssey, which is published this week by Biteback (£12.99).

And Vignes’ conclusion is that the gleaming Albion you see before you in the multi-million pound world of the Premier League can be traced back to that shock managerial appointment in 1973.

It felt like the circus had come to town back then. It was certainly an awakening period for the neighbouring towns of Brighton and Hove, as they then were, as well as their football club.

Clough and his irreplaceable assistant Peter Taylor, fresh from taking Derby to the title and the European Cup semis, were hired by Albion chairman Mike Bamber.

The Eurovision Song Contest, with Olivia Newton-John singing for the United Kingdom and Abba representing Sweden, came to Brighton the following spring.

If Waterloo helped put Brighton on the map, Clough did the same when he arrived at the Goldstone.

That is why the Clough effect, Vignes maintains, lives on to a degree in the Albion you see today.

Clough did not hang around for long, moving to Leeds after eight months. But his right-hand man Taylor stayed and signings which followed laid the foundations for Alan Mullery to take the club from third tier to first.

It was a golden era for Albion which is only now being matched.

There have been desperate times between then and now.

Vignes said: “Working on the book, I got a real sense of Clough’s importance to Brighton.

“He didn’t win any cups or get us promoted but what he did was put Brighton on the map when we had never been before.

“We had never been higher than mid-table in the second division, never been past the fifth round of the FA Cup.

“We were a lower league team. That changed the moment Clough walked in.

“You can almost draw a line from then to the present day.

“It was the supporter base built during the 1970s who kept us alive during the tough times of the 1990s.

“We could have gone the way of Darlington or Scarborough without that.”

All of which points to Bamber as the man who inspired the modern era Albion.

Because he was the man who had the ambition, the audacity and the money to tempt Clough, the nation’s hottest young managerial property, far from his native North East and to the Sussex coast.

Vignes examines the reasons for Clough coming our way and puts it down to four factors.

He said: “Clough could have gone anywhere. He was at the top of his game. Brighton were sixth bottom in division three.

“Even by Clough’s standards, that made no sense at all.

“There were four reasons why he did it.

“One was money. It was big money, even by first division standards.

“Another was Clough got on well with Bamber. He was the only chairman Clough ever saw eye-to-eye with.

“Thirdly, he was scared of being unemployed. Remember he was born into 1930s Middlesbrough in the middle of the depression.

“But the main one was the FA charge he had hanging over him for comments he made about Leeds and their match with Birmingham.

“If that had gone against him and he’d had no club, he feared he would have been suspended from management for three years.

“He was like a drowning man just trying to grab any jetsam and flotsam and along came Mike Bamber right at that moment. Clough grabbed hold of us.

“It was only going to work if the players took to him.”

The obvious conclusion is that, unlike Taylor, Clough’s heart was not in the job.

Vignes added: “Clough came out with all the right stuff about what he was going to do.

“But a lot of the time he wasn’t in Brighton. He kept his house in Derby and was very rarely at training.

“When he went to Leeds, he assumed Peter Taylor would go with him.

“I certainly didn’t realise that it was only at the last minute that Taylor said he wasn’t going.

“That was a key moment from the Albion’s point of view.

“Taylor then built the team that Alan Mullery took from the third division to the first.

“Peter Taylor comes out of the book very well. Brian Clough not so much”

Vignes gives a terrific feel for the era. He has spoken to almost all the players of the time and senses a split in opinion, with the youngsters in the squad speaking more favourably of their former boss.

Bloody Southerners tells the true story of Clough’s arrival and departure, without the poetic licence used in the film The Damned United.

Just as importantly, it fills in the gaps left by previous Clough works.

Vignes said: “The Clough and Taylor story has been pulled apart left, right and centre and everyone has done his Derby, Leeds and Forest days.

“No one had done his time at Brighton.

“The more I thought about it, the more it was the most intriguing part of the story.”

The official launch of Bloody Southerners takes place tonight at the Caxton Arms in North Gardens, near Brighton Station. The event gets under way at 6.30pm, with a few Albion players of the Clough era due to attend. Fan are welcome to attend on a “the more the merrier” basis.