Clough kid might make slow haste popular

SOCCER ANGLES:Jose Mourinho and his ilk will, we hope, learn from a young man in no hurry, serving his time before taking over at one of his dad's clubs, Derby County.

JOSE MOURINHO will be at Old Trafford tomorrow, apparently, scouting for Inter Milan in preparation for next month's European Cup extravaganza between the champions of England and Italy. Nine days on and Nigel Clough will get to Manchester, as manager of Derby County. That's in the League Cup semi-final, second leg. Clough would not be the first to arrive later than Mourinho.

The League Cup may be pale sat alongside the rouged glamour of the Champions League, but it mattered enough to Mourinho when at Stamford Bridge for Chelsea to win it twice. It is possible even to imagine Mourinho and Clough having a discussion about the merits of the competition.

But the impression is a Mourinho and Clough conversation would be brief, that they would not chime as characters. Brian Clough did say he saw something of himself in Mourinho - the noise, the energy, the ego, the talent - but Clough must surely have seen something of himself, too, in young Nigel. The self-determination, the quirkiness, the talent, the genes. Derby County.

Maybe Mourinho and Clough jnr have more in common than it appears from a distance, but they are going about revealing so in a strange way. Mourinho is a man in a hurry; Clough, well, you know, he's, sort of. Not.

A private hope is that Clough succeeds, because if he does then patience might come back into fashion, in football management, and in football in general.

We could do with a change of pace. We need something of the easy sway of Nigel Clough the player. Jose Mourinho was part of the opposite in modern football, the acceleration, the breathless importance, the 24-hour televised treadmill. This may not have been a conscious decision on the Portuguese's part, but his spangled arrival at Chelsea gave the soap opera of English football a new leading character. Young, handsome as the stars and loving every minute of it, Mourinho put his foot on the pedal. The rest gasped.

Initially even the Fergusons and Wengers of this world seemed to be in Mourinho's wake, but as he came, conquered and departed, the two elder statesmen managers stayed on, strongly. Mourinho's intervention - in tandem with the Abramovich money, of course - altered Manchester United's and Arsenal's climate, but ultimately it seems as if another legacy of Mourinho's was felt elsewhere.

And it was unplanned. It is called young manager's haste. Paul Ince may have suffered from it. Iain Dowie and Paul Simpson were others who looked to be moving too fast too soon. Lawrie Sanchez had such a rush to get to the Premier League and become Mourinho's neighbour at Fulham he ditched Northern Ireland in mid-qualification.

Other factors will have been at play in each case, but a cultural shift was also involved. Ince will soon be followed by former England colleagues such as Alan Shearer and Gary Neville, and a sadness is that there is no expectation of such characters spending four years at Yeovil or Hereford, or wherever, simply learning the trade.

Nigel Clough spent a decade at Burton Albion. That will have been interpreted as perverse down the years, a sign of a man lacking ambition. Nottingham Forest, Clough's team as a player, are on their eighth manager in that period. In succeeding Paul Jewell, Clough has become Derby's eighth in the same time. Clough's time at Burton can legitimately be called an era.

The haste is not all Mourinho's fault therefore: some of it is cultural. Watford appeared to have made a stand for patience and common sense when they retained Aidy Boothroyd's services after the club was relegated from the Premier League 18 months ago.

Boothroyd lasted until November, three-and-a-half years into the job. He had taken them up and down, sold players such as Ashley Young and generally looked to be most capable. But three-and-a-half years is not an era.

Had he kept Watford in the Premier League, despite the degree of difficulty, Boothroyd would surely have been fast- tracked to Blackburn like Ince, or maybe Manchester City or the like. Yet Boothroyd is still only 37. That would have been too soon.

Martin O'Neill would appear to be constructing an era at Aston Villa. He should recognise it, because he built one before at Wycombe Wanderers. Five years O'Neill spent at Wycombe, a man who had won the European Cup as a player. He was 38 when he started there and had been at Grantham Town before that. You can hear an echo of Brian Clough in O'Neill, and we may come to think we hear an echo of O'Neill in Nigel Clough.

Mourinho was nearly 38 when he got his first job as a manager, at Benfica. It did not go swimmingly. He lasted four months. He was, as we all came to see, demanding from the beginning. Then, though, he did not possess the power of his reputation.

But as he assembled it at Porto, Mourinho became louder and faster. He fizzed through England and turned a lot of heads in a lot of directors' boxes and, it appears, on coaching courses too. Just not on Nigel Clough's.

Let's hope for his sake, Derby's and football's in general it is worth the wait. It might start a trend.

Not all in the mind games

ARE YOU one of those who thinks Alex Ferguson's so-called mind games are one of the most exaggerated so-called phenomena of the modern era? But the phrase was there again yesterday when Ferguson's comments about Rafael Benitez were reported, and Benitez's response. There is now a war of words, apparently.

Maybe there is something to this alleged psychological aggression, but does it not seem more relevant to the title race that Manchester United have nine Premier League games between tomorrow and the end of February and that six of them - Chelsea, Wigan, Everton, Fulham, Blackburn and Portsmouth - are at Old Trafford?

Hull bubble talk hot air

ANOTHER PHRASE gaining popularity and credibility is Hull City's bubble has burst. Despite their place in the table and their status as one of the good news stories of the season, it is now pointed out that Hull have lost their last three league games and won just one of their last 11. Today Hull are at Everton. Hull could do with bursting the bubble of the "Hull's bubble has burst" phrase's rise.