Nottingham Forest are handily placed for a strong second half of the season if promises of big January spending are fulfilled. So what’s manager Billy Davies’ problem?
Damn you Nottingham Forest and your pesky progress.
Only contractual obligation has me sitting here every Christmas Eve writing match previews for QPR’s latest Boxing Day let down, and the page impressions on the content are pathetic by this site’s reasonable standards, so it’s almost always a case of ploughing through as quickly as possible before collapsing into the only 24 hour period of the entire year where I neither open my lap top nor turn on my phone.
And had we been playing Nottingham Forest on Boxing Day last season then that quest would have been aided considerably by the antics of Kuwaiti businessman Fawaz Al Hasawi. His family purchased Nottingham Forest in the summer of 2012 after a tumultuous season that had started with Steve McClaren in charge and ended with Steve Cotterill, with the club apparently drifting following the sudden, unexpected death of chairman Nigel Doughty — father of QPR youth team graduate Michael.
Forest made the same mistake as several other clubs in believing McClaren to be a manager, when in actual fact he’s nothing of the sort. McClaren, as a coach, is one of the best in the country — QPR’s current promotion drive is built on the exemplary work he did with the squad in the summer when Harry Redknapp was away having his knee operated on. McClaren as a manager stands on the touchline under an umbrella, and thinks the most important thing to do after getting the England job is to get his teeth sorted out. McClaren the manager is an arse; McClaren the coach is an asset. Arguably, QPR have never been quite as good since he left for Derby — cleverly appointed as ‘head coach’ rather than manager. Not as dumb as they look, or perhaps once were, those Rams — seven wins on the bounce at the time of writing.
Steve Cotterill is an arse whatever job you put him in, so you could forgive Al Hasawi an immediate change having completed the takeover, and bringing in Shaun O’Driscoll — who’d coached at Forest the year before and took little persuading to leave the Crawley job he’d taken only weeks previously — seemed like a well-researched, well-thought through, shrewd appointment as opposed to the usual big-statement, big-name car crash that a rich foreign owner usually goes for in such circumstances.
Then things went a little awry. O’Driscoll was sacked at the turn of the year after a televised 4-2 thrashing of Leeds at the City Ground. In fairness he never comes across as a people person, and fits into the Nigel Pearson, Tim Sherwood category of managers you’d hope are a good deal more convincing and motivational in the dressing room than they ever come across on the television — but still, it seemed a silly, harsh sacking.
Forest then appointed Alex McLeish. Sigh. Where do you start with that one? McLeish, whose managerial record in Scotland with first Hibs and then Rangers was admittedly very decent — with the obvious caveat of it being achieved in a park-standard league — relegated a Birmingham side that was a long way from being the third worst Premier League team in 2007/08 and then, having promoted it straight back, relegated it a second time in 2009/10 while playing for a draw on the final day at Spurs when they needed a win. Having been ludicrously poached across the city by Aston Villa he nearly relegated them as well.
McLeish is one of a growing collection of brow-beaten, hagged-faced philistines who gather on the Goals on Sunday sofa because they’re mates with Chris Kamara and use the cringeworthy montages of their best moments and the shampoo-commercial style "interviews” over the course of three hours to put forward their case for how brilliant they are, how useless every foreign coach in the country is, and how outrageous it is that they cannot get a job somewhere. "I’d definitely go back for the right opportunity,” they say, en masse, and some plonker always turns up with said opportunity sooner or later.
When the first signing made by Alex McLeish is Kuwaiti goalkeeper Khalid Al-Rashidi you sense that all is not quite as it seems and, sure enough, even the McRelegator felt compelled to resign a month into the job after his quest to sign George Boyd from Peterborough had been scuppered by some spurious medical concern about his sight.
So far, so predictable. Temperamental foreign owner with little idea about English football, or Nottingham Forest, flaps around in a mass of ego and nonsense and makes a total pig’s ear of running one of this country’s historic football clubs — turn to the Cardiff, Hull, QPR case studies in your text book. I could, potentially, have just copied and pasted any number of articles written over the past 18 months here and disappeared off for Christmas Eve drinks.
What happened next was an intriguing move — bringing back Billy Davies for a second stint in charge. Now Davies’ record at this level speaks for itself. He took a Preston club that is a League One yo-yo size at best to multiple Championship play offs and then promoted a mediocre Derby side into the Premier League one year into a three year plan. As it turned out that was far too soon, and Derby were worse equipped for a top flight season than any other team since the formation of the Premier League — they won only once all season — but Davies did well to get them there in the first place.
The problem is he seems to thrive on confrontation. When he should have been building that Rams team for the top division he was busy moaning to the press about the lack of new deals for his backroom staff, primarily assistant David Kelly. His last spell at Forest ended with similar acrimonious contract nonsense and at Preston he rubbed Leeds up the wrong way during a tempestuous play off duel. He just likes to be rowing with somebody, and he’s at it again this season.
This time it’s the media who Davies seems to have his sights set on. The Guardian and Observer were banned from Forest earlier this season for sending reporter Daniel Taylor to the City Ground press box last season but not publishing a match report — the paper has since published a number of damaging articles alleging that Davies’ cousin Jim Price, a Scottish solicitor serving suspension for disciplinary breaches, has been signing legal contract for Forest against the league’s laughable ‘fit and proper person’ regulations.
And access has also been restricted to the local BBC radio, and Nottingham Evening Post reporters as well with http://www.nottinghampost.com/Nottingham-Forest-formally-limit-media-access/stor reason given. Davies, apparently, didn’t approve of the coverage of his last spell with the club, but as if to highlight that he simply likes the aggro he went after a photographer at the side of the pitch in a recent game with Millwall who had dared to take a picture of the Forest bench.
Presumably Davies believe this sort of behaviour fosters the sort of ‘us v the world’ mentality in his squad that Alex Ferguson used to his advantage so often at Manchester United. Just two wins from the last ten, and a run of five home games without success, has dropped them down to seventh and suggests that Davies would be better to concentrate on the fundamentals of managing his team rather than embedding himself in mind games.
With money promised for January spending, they’re certainly an interesting wild card to watch in the second half of the campaign.
Formerly "The work experience boy who never left” at the Northants Evening Telegraph, Jack McCormick runs the rule over his beloved Forest side for LFW. Despite since crossing over to the darkside of PR, we nevertheless thank him for his time at Christmas.
Assess Forest’s season so far for us. Par for the course so far? Pretty much what was expected?
We started well but our lack of real firepower (despite being awash with ‘strikers’) has seen us found out a number of times recently, and the fans are getting frustrated. We’ve shipped out the likes of Dexter Blackstock (remember him?), Ishmael Miller (and him?) and Marcus Tudgay on loan but haven’t replaced them with anyone who can hit the back of the net. As you can imagine, we’re all delighted to see Charlie Austin banging them in at Loftus Road after allegedly turning us down at the eleventh hour.
Considering the amount of money we spent (or at least tried to spend) in the summer, I think most of us expected to be challenging for the top two despite a fiercely competitive league again this year. But after our strong start we’ve faded — you might say we’re in a decent position and are still picking up points, but there have been a couple of worryingly uninspiring performances in recent weeks.
What is the general consensus about Forest’s owners, given the managerial upheaval that went on last season?
Fawaz Al Hasawi, who is the most involved of the Kuwaiti family that purchased the club last year, is almost universally loved by the fans — he’s just a decent bloke trying his hardest to replicate the success of his hero Brian Clough. He’s put his faith in Billy Davies and has bankrolled a number of quality signings already this season, with the promise of more to come in January, and there are few who would dare speak a bad word about him at the moment.
But it could have been so different — before he brought Billy back he was very close to losing the fans. A succession of strange, ruthless decisions (sacking popular Frank Clark, then chairman, with a letter to his home address that his wife opened was a particular low) led to most of us questioning what on earth was going on in his head, and fearing for the future of our once-great club. Billy has steadied the ship and appears to have a good relationship with the board, but after last season who knows what might happen next.
Were you in favour of Billy Davies coming back to the club? Was he welcomed back universally? How do you think he’s done so far?
It was exactly a year ago, Boxing Day 2012, when Fawaz sacked Sean O’Driscoll with us sitting just outside the playoffs and having just beaten Leeds 4-2 live on Sky. We’ll all be hoping for a similar result again this time, but it might surprise you to hear that some fans will also be hoping for another sacking.
When Billy arrived following the predictably woeful Alex McLeish era, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. The fans had been singing ‘we want our Billy back’ for months and Fawaz gave them what they wanted. Yes there were those who would never forget the way he appeared to engineer his own sacking last time around, publicly refusing to commit to the club after losing in the playoffs again, but it was a masterstroke and immediately brought a huge chunk of loyal Reds back onside, myself included. We won our first six games on the trot and only narrowly missed out on another playoff semi, having been looking nervously at the drop zone just a few weeks earlier.
But fast forward to December 2013 and it’s not all looking quite so rosy. Billy has started some bizarre crusade against the media (more on that later) and the spark that saw us spank Huddersfield 6-1 when he first arrived has disappeared. He keeps talking about the ‘missing pieces of the puzzle’ that he’ll look to find in the January window and I think most of us will give him that chance to prove he’s still got what it takes — but if performances and results don’t improve dramatically the noisy minority already calling for his head may get a lot louder.
What’s with all the disputes with the media he seems to be determined to cook up? Just the usual attempt to create an ‘us v them’ siege mentality?
This is an odd one. ‘Us vs Them’ has always been Billy’s style and it usually works, taking the pressure off the team and allowing them to play with freedom. But there’s clearly something more going on — Billy seems convinced that certain members of the press were out to get him last time round and is determined to make their lives as difficult as possible now he’s back. Whether this is true or Billy is just paranoid in the extreme is up for debate, but there are no interviews with the manager in the press and a couple of journos have been banned from attending games. Apparently fans should just head to the club’s official website for all the latest news, where we’re sure to find considered, non-biased news and views on everything Nottingham Forest.
If anything, the tense relationship with the media has served to distract the players, rather than take the pressure off. Our poor performances have coincided with Billy’s poor PR strategy (screaming in the face of a press snapper for taking pictures of the dugout during the Millwall game, for example).
Who have been the stand out performers and where are the weak links in the team?
Andy Reid is still a class above, and after shedding a fair few pounds over the last couple of seasons has become arguably our most influential player. His left foot is a wand, it’s just a shame there’s nobody up front to tuck away the two or three chances he puts on a plate for them every game.
Young centre back Jamaal Lascelles got his chance after an injury to Kelvin Wilson and has really taken it. He was apparently subject of a hefty bid from Arsenal a couple of seasons ago, and is now living up to his potential for the first time. He wins everything in the air alongside Jack Hobbs, another who has impressed, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle Austin.
Henri Lansbury has also made strides this season and was our top scorer at one point. Not sure about the beard, though.
Our weak links are our fullbacks and our forwards. Captain Chris Cohen is out for the season so slow, scared Dan Harding is filling in at left back. Right back Eric Lichaj, the US international we got on a free from Aston Villa, started the season strongly but has made a number of mistakes in recent weeks and looks low on confidence. As for the strikers, Darius Henderson is always a handful but doesn’t score enough and, while he’s already equalled his tally for last season, Simon Cox needs three or four chances before he’ll put one away.
How has Jamie Mackie settled in and what do the fans make of him? Where does he play in the team and how’s he done so far?
He’s settled in well, and has basically been everything we were told he would be. He gives 110%, plays with his heart on his sleeve etc etc. I’ve actually been surprised by how skilful he is — I was expecting a bit of a headless chicken in the Nathan Tyson mould, but he’s much better than that. He started up front but has since moved wide right, which appears to be his best position. He’s caused defenders a few headaches but has only scored twice so far, although I’d be interested to see how many assists he’s had and chances he’s created through sheer hard work. He’s a very ‘Billy Davies’ type player, and I for one would be happy to see him on the teamsheet every week.
Is there a suggestion that money will be spent on the team in January? Who have you been linked with?
Yes, Billy has publicly said he’s had positive talks with the chairman and will look to strengthen in January. It’s clear that a decent striker and a left back will be on his list, and we’ve already been linked with Shane Long at West Brom. That would be one hell of a signing, and despite costing £6.5m he would pay for himself by scoring the goals to fire us to promotion. That’s the plan, anyway. Most agents know we have money now, so it’s fair to assume that we’ll be linked with every man and his dog like we were over the summer — I’m sure you know how that feels.
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