Football News: Nottingham Forest And The Curse Of Popularity Over Ability

Image from: colorsport.co.uk

This coming season is a tough one for Nottingham Forest, with restrictions imposed due to breaches of the Championship's FFP rules making it very difficult for them to do much in the transfer market. Even selling players for good money is not going to free them up from those restrictions in time to make a splash in the summer window. With star man, Michail Antonio, being chased by a couple of Premier League clubs, there is little incentive for the Tricky Trees to let him leave.

The worry is that the club have got in this position in the first place, with an immensely wealthy benefactor who seems to have little real business sense. On its own, just the club breaching the FFP regulations would not be a major worry, the problem is that it is just one issue amongst many with the financial management of Forest. This is a club that is unable to pay its bills on time, despite the owner, Fawaz Al-Hasawi, having an obscene amount of money at his disposal.

Paying the bills at the last possible moment would be one thing, but this is a club that is repeatedly being dragged into court over unpaid bills, bills which could easily have been paid if the company was being run properly. I know you want to pay bills at the last possible moment, but this is way past that moment, up to the point where it starts to increase the amount paid by adding court costs, solicitor fees and interest payments on to the amount owed. This is something that should have been addressed the first time, but it is now 3 years since Fawaz took ownership and it is still recurring.

Added to the bounced cheques and credit cards being refused, it starts to paint a worrying picture of a business being run by people with no business acumen. Each incident in isolation could be put down to a minor error, but this is repeated mistakes on a regular and ongoing basis, with no sign of anyone learning from them. The club seem to have no basic long term plan and no one directing operations who can make the necessary changes to avoid these issues arising in the future.

Each of these incidents erodes Forest's credit rating, which adds to the issues, as gradually companies stop showing goodwill to the club and demand upfront payments for their goods and services. That is weakening the club's position even further with regards to FFP, as it loses its easy payment terms. Previous owners had already put the East Midlands club into a place where it was seen as a bad risk, due to their financial mismanagement, Fawaz really needed to repair that reputation, instead he is damaging it further.

I am put in mind of another former owner of an English football club, David Moores, in certain ways. Like Moores, Fawaz inherited his fortune, not made it. Moores also had no forward planning and threw money at areas that excited him, while not investing in areas that needed investment because they just did not interest him. Though, unlike Moores, Fawaz is willing to put his own money up and pay out, rather than just look to take money out, that does not mean he has any more business acumen.

This is a club that needs careful planning and forward thinking to rebuild it from the slump it has suffered since the days of Brian Clough. He performed miracles to get the club to where it was, but it has fallen a very long way since then. Is Fawaz capable of putting aside his desire to be the centre of everything, to get the right people in the right roles and be happy with merely signing cheques when required, as Clough would have wanted from a chairman?

I fear that Fawaz will continue to hog the limelight on social media, milking the applause for being the 'saviour' of Forest and neglecting forward planning for the club's future. Will he realise that at times he will need to be unpopular, that the only real glory he can hope for as an owner/chairman is to not be hated for bringing in yet another failed manager to the club? That being successful will not make him popular with the fans, it will just mean most forget about him, until the next time the club have a bad patch when he will again be blamed?

Fans talk about great managers, like Cloughie, not great owners or chairmen. How many people even know who the chairman was during Clough's heyday? The chairmen that are well known, in almost all cases, are those that failed particularly badly. The Shaun Harvey and Peter Ridsdale's of this world, who destroy club after club while lining their own already bulging pockets with more money.

The standout example contrary to this is Roman Abramovich, but he has actively avoided the limelight and left the running of the club, in the main to others. He has never sought fans' approval on social media, he makes major decisions based on what he, and his cadre of football advisors, feels are best for the club, not what the fans want. Fawaz brought Billy Davies and Stuart Pearce in to pander to the fans, Roman brought back Jose Mourinho because he brings success with him.

That is a huge and significant difference. Jose won things with Chelsea, then went elsewhere and continued to win things, he was a proven winner. Davies failed to win promotion to the Premier League, left Forest and was seen as so toxic he was unable to get a job anywhere else. A strong chairman would have looked elsewhere, despite knowing it would make them unpopular with the fans in the short term, and found the best manager for the club, not the most popular.

Fawaz has a lot to offer, he clearly wants to succeed with Forest, but he needs to be stronger and less worried about his image with the fanbase. Less time on social media and more time working on getting better sponsorship deals or improving the club's merchandising department would go a long way to bringing the success he desires.

Written by Tris Burke July 31 2015 08:20:03