Arsene Wenger hailed Brian Clough as one of the “greatest” managers to have graced the English game.
And as he prepared his Arsenal side for Sunday’s trip to Old Big ’Ead’s old stamping ground, the Frenchman:
* Revealed that Cloughie was one of his inspirations as a young manager.
* Spoke of his admiration for the imprint the former Forest and Derby manager’s personality left on the game.
* Claimed Clough’s achievements at the City Ground, where he won two European Cups with a non-superpower, will never be repeated.
Wenger said: “Of course, Clough was one of the managers I used to look at when I was a young manager.
“I looked at all the big managers who were successful. I spent time you would not believe going to see how managers worked, travelling in my car at night and watching the training in the morning, then going back home again.
“Today, everything is available, it’s easier. You go on the internet and you have every exercise of every single club.
“But at that time you had to look and it was a rarity to see – Brian Clough was like a guy on another planet.”
Wenger arrived in the Premier League in 1996, three years after Clough had retired, but the two men met after a game at the City Ground in the Arsenal boss’s early years in England.
He added: “We didn’t speak a lot because he was already fatigued and was lean, very lean.You could see he was not at full power anymore. I had huge respect and greeted him: ‘All the best’, and, ‘Bye-bye’.
“Whether his achievement was bigger than his personality, I don’t know, but he’s a special person in English football.
“His personality left a huge print in the history of the game so he will be remembered as one of the greatest ever — one of the three or four greatest in English football.
“It shows how football has changed. Can Nottingham Forest win the European Cup today? Could Aston Villa win the European Cup? That has gone.
“Football has changed and all the best players in the world are grouped in a small number of teams. The success has become much more predictable.
“Teams only had two foreign players, you had income shared equally because there was no television money, only the gates made the difference.”
* ARSENE WENGER is against plans to scrap FA Cup replays.
The decision was taken last season that all matches from the quarter-finals onwards would be settled on the day of the game.
But the Arsenal boss said: “I wouldn’t abolish FA Cup replays. Maybe it helped us a little bit to win this trophy, so overall we have a squad who can deal with that.”