Look out for the next Clough and Fergie generation

I commented on how relaxed he looked, but I suppose after being in the business for so many years he now knows every aspect of the job.

We talked about how things have changed over the years.

I pulled his leg about the fact there were four security men smartly dressed in club blazers from Manchester following him around.

As he said, even some chairmen have got them now.

I wonder who he meant by that?

We spoke about the job of managing and Alex is a very active member of the League Managers Association committee.

This, of course, is a major plus to the LMA. Not only has he decades of football experience, but in his former life in the shipyards he was also an active union member there.

Already this season nearly a third of the 92 managers have been changed.

I suppose what is more alarming is that some of these have been in the Premiership which usually keep managers longer than the other divisions.

That’s because the managers there have normally completed apprenticeships in the lower divisions before they got the big one.

This is what people such as Bobby Robson, Brian Clough and myself did and, in later years, Alex himself. He started at clubs like St Mirren and then A b e r d e e n before taking on the biggest job in football, in my opinion, at Old Trafford.

I got round to saying how well I thought his son, Darren, was doing at Peterborough, who are aiming for their second successive promotion this season.

We remembered an occasion many, many years ago when we were all up in London to go to a grand evening hosted by the Football Writers Association.

My wife Anne and I, along with Lew Chatterley and his wife, happened to be in the same hotel as many other football people.

It was pouring with rain and there were lots outside on the steps waiting for taxis.

Because it was the Royal Garden Hotel, which we famously had gone to after winning the Cup all those years before, I was able to go back in and ask the manager if we could use the hotel’s limo to take us to the function.

It promptly pulled up outside the main door and the driver got out and called my name.

And as the four of us walked forward, you can imagine some of the comments!

I just gave them the Royal wave but on getting into the car realised there was room for two more.

I pulled the window down and called out to a young Alex and his wife to join us, to the chagrin of most of the others.

But waving them off were these two little boys.

Of course the next time I was to see one of them was when Peterborough knocked us out of the League Cup a couple of years ago.

Since then, Darren has got his team promoted and is doing very well now in League One.

Alex told me he has now been linked with jobs higher up and one in particular recently he would have gone to, but they had approached him directly and he said they should go through the proper channels first.

This didn’t happen so he declined the job which, believe me, was a very big one.

Darren is very much his own man. He will ring his father for advice on matters but he certainly doesn’t take advantage by borrowing players for Peterborough.

He wants to be seen to be doing it his own way.

I know this doesn’t always please Barry Fry, the larger than life character who is now some sort of general manager or director of football type, but who is 100 per cent behind Darren.

As Alex said, it is always good to have someone who has been through it all and doesn’t want to do the job again there to help a younger manager – even if it is just to sit down now and again for a cup of tea and be a sounding board.

So I was more than a bit interested when this week another son of a manager-father, Nigel Clough, joined the big time.

Brian and I were very close.

We still keep in touch with his widow Barbara, who on her Christmas card said she still misses him every day but is lucky to have her grandchildren close by.

She of course may have slight doubts about Nigel stepping into the bigger spotlight with Derby.

But she will no doubt be relieved the job he has taken is in the same area as Burton, the club he is leaving, as opposed to somewhere hundreds of miles away.

That would have made it really difficult for her.

Nigel has always been very much his own man – let’s face it, no one anywhere could ever be like his dad. He was truly a one-off.

His methods were hardly ever by the book.

I remember poking my head in before one of his Wembley finals to wish him good luck.

He was sat there wearing a flat cap, slippers and a jock strap!

He ushered me in and, despite me trying to back away, he demanded I sat next to him.

He then told the players to sit down, pointed to me and billed me to be much better than I ever thought I was, saying that I was somebody like him who knew how to win at Wembley.

He then pointed to the football that was in the middle of the floor and said ‘that there is something you have to go and get, you have to keep it and eventually put it into that thing which is called a goal.’ That was the sum total of his team talk, with a few expletives in between.

And of course they went on to win yet another League Cup for him.

Nigel, on the other hand, who was with the squad when I was with England, was quiet. But he has that determined streak which made him an international, gaining many more caps than his dad.

He played his football at the highest level, whereas his dad scored all of his goals in the second division with a career cruelly ended by injury before he could get going into the top flight.

Nigel has cut his teeth at Burton.

Ten years at that level must be a bit of a record.

But look where he’s left them – 13 points clear at the top.

Undoubtedly if he had he stayed he would have them in league football next season.

I know his relationship with the chairman there has been excellent.

The chairman, like the one I had at Grimsby, would be saying ‘I don’t want you to go but it is right for you to take this opportunity.’ We will see a different Clough but a change in Derby’s fortunes.

He does not necessary like the limelight but, as he showed a couple of seasons ago when they drew Manchester United in the Cup when the requests for interviews come piling in, he can handle it in his own way.

Like all of us, he will be judged on results.

I always keep a close eye on explayers of mine, whether they came through our club system or my England under-21 team.

And those such as Nick Holmes and Ian Baird at Salisbury City and Eastleigh are virtually at the same level Nigel has been.

I would love eventually to see them do what he is doing this week and I wish them all well.