Comparing Jose Mourinho to Brian Clough

Brian Clough took an instinctive liking to Jose Mourinho. "There's a bit of the young Clough about him," he said. "For a start, he's good-looking and, like me, he doesn't believe in the star system. He's consumed with team spirit and discipline. The players have to fit in with his vision and pattern of play, which is right."

Those extremely perceptive words were spoken in an interview given by Clough a short time before his death in September 2004, at a time when Mourinho had been in England only a few weeks. But Clough had already noted the Portuguese coach's success in emulating his own achievement by winning the European Cup with an unfashionable and cheaply assembled team.

That and the good looks were not the only things they had in common. Like Clough, Mourinho is a natural controversialist and happy to use his ease with the media as a weapon in the constant battle to dominate his adversaries, both outside and inside his club. The things that divide them are mostly to do with changes inside the game since Clough's heyday - it would be impossible to imagine Mourinho signing a player for an English record fee and then inviting him to start his career at his new club by making the tea, as Clough did with Trevor Francis in 1979, and no modern manager could afford to emulate Clough's disdainful attitude to tactical preparation.

If Clough had stuck around a bit longer he might have observed that they shared a nose for trouble, something of which we have been reminded by the events at Stamford Bridge in recent days. The emerging differences between Mourinho and Roman Abramovich evoke the breakdown of Clough's relationship with Sam Longson, the Derby County chairman, barely a year after he had led the club to the only league title in their history, culminating in a dramatic departure that became a lasting source of regret.

Having seen off an attempt to truncate his first managerial appointment by the owner of Hartlepools United, Clough was not unduly disturbed by Longson's insistence that he should spend less time appearing on television and restrain his increasingly vituperative criticism of other clubs, notably Don Revie's Leeds United. When push came to shove, and he and his sidekick Peter Taylor responded by handing in their resignations, they probably imagined that Longson's fellow board members would bring the chairman to his senses. And if that failed, then a display of player-power would surely do the trick.

It didn't, but it was the revolt led by Roy McFarland and Terry Hennessey that came to mind when John Terry, Didier Drogba and Arjen Robben all made a point of expressing their support for the manager at the weekend. Like Chelsea, Derby were in the top three when Clough walked out of the Baseball Ground. On the face of it, the club had everything to lose by allowing the magician who had brought them the championship to flounce off, leaving behind a disaffected dressing room. That failed to deter them, and although Dave Mackay led the remnants of Clough's team to a second title the following year, it was the beginning of a long decline.

"It's not my club - I'm just the manager," Mourinho said last week, aiming for the maximum dramatic effect. But Abramovich would do well to spend more time listening to him. Like Clough, Mourinho has his faults and makes his mistakes. But it was he, not Pini Zahavi, Peter Kenyon, Eugene Shvidler, Eugene Tenenbaum or Frank Arnesen, who used the Russian's resources to make Chelsea into champions. And it's not hard to imagine whose side old Cloughie would be on.

Life on the edge as Miller hurtles down the piste in the ski tracks of Klammer

All the talk before Saturday's Lauberhorn race in Wengen was of the lack of snow and the difficulty of preparing the longest piste in World Cup downhill racing. Afterwards there was much comment on the advisability of skiing at speeds of up to 90mph with only the thinnest covering on such a tricky course. But the organisers' efforts ensured that the world was able to enjoy one of the most spectacular sporting moments of the year.

To those who care about such things, Bode Miller's winning run was not far off Franz Klammer's legendary descent at Innsbruck in the 1976 Winter Olympics. "I thought I was going to crash all the way down," Klammer remarked after juddering and bucking to a gold medal. Miller might have said much the same on Saturday night.

The Lauberhorn course is to Kitzbühel's equally famous Hahnenkamm as Spa is to Monaco in formula one. Each offers a unique examination of judgment and ability, but the 2.8-mile Wengen course also calls on reserves of courage and endurance that seem to belong to another age.

By the time Miller made his appearance, frequent crashes among the early starters had indicated the elevated nature of this year's challenge. The 26th of the racers, he took a radically different line from every other skier. By the time he cut the timing beam, sprawling on the snow as he crashed on landing out of the final jump, he had achieved a time 1.47sec faster than any of his predecessors.

Even though the Lauberhorn takes the best part of three minutes to complete, 1.47sec is still an eternity. Only Didier Cuche, who followed Miller down the mountain, came closer, the Swiss skier inspired by the new target time to finish 0.65sec behind the American.

Off the piste, the high-living, blunt-spoken Miller is not everybody's mug of gluhwein. But his insistence that winning is the only point of the exercise leads him to places that no other downhiller can go, and on Saturday we were the privileged witnesses to his quest.

Savage truth revealed on playing the feign game

"I've gone past those old days of feigning injury," Robbie Savage said after taking two wild hacks at Gilberto Silva in as many seconds and then going down like a Spanish republican soldier in a Robert Capa photograph when the infuriated Brazilian flicked out a foot in retaliation. Silva was sent off, of course, while Savage received a yellow card.

Inevitably, the Blackburn Rovers midfielder was wasting his time when he belatedly attempted to persuade the referee not to wave the red card at his opponent. As usual, the retaliation was punished more harshly than the provocation, and Silva - Arsenal's most consistent player this season - will miss Sunday's visit of Manchester United, and two other big games.

Savage would not have realised it, but his post-match comment told the whole story. So he once made a habit of feigning injury, did he? Surprise, surprise. But if we were right to disbelieve him then, why on earth should we believe him now?

No head start for Alonso

Sometimes the smallest things can set the alarm bell ringing. On the face of it, Fernando Alonso's decision to change his helmet colours, abandoning the familiar blue and yellow which echoed the flag of his native Asturias, should not affect his chances of achieving a hat-trick of formula one world titles this season. On the other hand ...