It has been a very busy January at Nottingham Forest so far, but perhaps not quite in the way that many of us would have expected. Having removed Sean O’Driscoll from his post on Boxing Day and swiftly appointed Alex McLeish to replace him the changes have continued into this new year.
Club Ambassador Frank Clark, Head of Recruitment Keith Burt and Chief Executive Mark Arthur have now also left the club to varying degrees of satisfaction or distaste amongst supporters. The silence from the club’s owners on this issue has left a void for speculation which suggests that there may have been a falling out on strategy and resulting confrontation.
It is not clear what happened with Mark Arthur who was only recently invited back onto the club’s board. Reports suggest that he may have resigned from his post because of his unhappiness with the other decisions being taken. Rumours also abound that Burt has been in conflict over the recruitment of players which has led to his dismissal. All of this is speculation, however, with no side offering any actual explanation.
The oddest move is Frank Clark who’s role was only really ceremonial anyway and yet after 35 years of dedicated service as player, manager and chairman he has been told to stay away from the club. If this was merely a desire to move forwards and break from the past structure then a quiet word to thank him for his efforts and an open invitation to attend whenever he wishes would surely have achieved that. The nature of his dismissal would seem to support an argument and a unfriendly split.
It is not hard to believe that Burt was unhappy with the owners’ insistence on being involved in the recruitment of players, possibly ignoring his advice on specific targets and also being at odds with the in depth work that his scouting team usually put into recruiting new players. Similarly, it is easy to conclude that mild mannered Clark would become frustrated at the upheaval created by quickfire sackings going back to his own managerial appointment Cotterill, than O’Driscoll and now Burt.
Alex McLeish has claimed to be totally in the dark about the decision to sack Burt and has also suggested that the owners are putting forward suggestions for players to be signed via agents and advisers, which he has had final say on, both of which perhaps support the hypothesis of a fall out directly between Burt and the Al-Hasawis and a change in recruitment policy.
None of this is to say that any of the departures are inherently wrong. It is easy to argue that the club has stagnated over the last dozen years and that Mark Arthur and Keith Burt have been in key roles for much of that time. This sort of change is not unusual in football and it could well be beneficial to bring in some fresh ideas.
The concern is the way that the changes have occurred, the uncertainty in the motives for taking these decisions, the timing in the middle of an important transfer window and the lack of communication from those taking the decisions on why this has happened and how it fits in with the long term future of the club.
The level of change that has taken place in a very short space of time has created uncertainty about what the owners are trying to achieve at the club. In the summer the plan seemed quite clear, the end goal was Premier League football but this was being approached through a clear commitment to the long term development of the club.
That made a lot of sense with the appointment of Sean O’Driscoll, a recognised long term builder, and the return of John Pemberton to the coaching staff to oversee the progression of young players from the youth academy to the first team, via a reinstated Under 21 side. Although this was supported by some immediate investment in what was a threadbare squad the focus seemed to be on developing rather than buying progression.
Crucially the youth development side of the club is still in place with Nick Marshall and Gary Brazil bringing through an exciting under 18 team which sits at the top of their league and is playing some very attractive football and Pemberton already introducing those same players to reserve team football as well as trialling a number of new players to fill the gaps created by a previous abolition of the club’s development squad.
The promotion of 22 year old goalkeeper Karl Darlow to the first team is also very encouraging but again the way it has been done raises alarm bells. Lee Camp has fallen out of favour and been told he can leave the club but Alex McLeish was clear that he was seeking an experienced replacement, with former England goalkeepers linked in the media. A little later though Kuwaiti international Khalid Al Rashidi was signed, with a statement that he would not immediately be able to challenge for the first team, and Darlow was declared first choice.
The lack of clarity over the number one shirt raises further doubts about there being a formal strategy for the future of the club and implies a lack of leadership and unity in vision. The messages are mixed and whilst there are some areas of potential optimism they feel haphazard rather than planned.
The Championship is a difficult league which lacks the income of the top flight but none of the expectation. It is very difficult to run a club that has aspirations of promotion on a sound financial footing and many clubs have to look for financial injections from either wealthy owners or debt. Whilst that is a problem that requires the attention of football as a whole it is still essential that individual clubs have a clear route map for their progression and at the moment that seems to be lacking at Forest.
It is not enough to say we want to be “back where we belong”. It is fine to have a goal of promotion to the top flight but there needs to be a coherent plan for how to get there and what the values are that the club will stick to irrespective of the results on the pitch.
The fallout from the last three weeks of what Alex McLeish described in an interview on Forest World as “turmoil” has been for some of us to worry about how the club will move forward. Cardiff are currently sat on top of the league after a concerted level of high spending, the latest of which being the signing of Frazier Campbell on a reputed £30k a week wage. If Forest plan to match these rivals with spending where will the money come from and how will the need to spend over several years to catch up fit with Financial Fair Play rules which come into being next season.
Alternatively if the club has all along been planning to build something more solid that will last beyond the contracts of stellar signings (in a Championship context) and provide foundations for long term success and sustainability why did they so dramatically dismantle the club’s structures five months into their first season?
There are, as I have intimated above, some areas for optimism and I hope to talk about these more over the next few weeks but there are also a lot of questions that need answering. In the absence of any formal communication from the club on these issues it will be actions over the next few months that we must hope will provide them.
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I think your concerns may be valid, but at the moment they are no more than speculative. The other perspective is that the structure at the start of the season was temporary, a sensible strategy to have experienced heads around and continuity in coaching in a time of upheaval. Now, six months down the line, with the club in a stable place, the Al Hasawis are able to put the structures they want in place.
Therefore, I think it would be equally churlish to judge the strategy as ‘boom or bust’ now as it was to judge it as ‘long term’ at the start of the season.
There have been encouraging links to Baldwin at Doncaster this week, who would be a welcome appointment in the CEO role. And the development (and renaming) of the academy, the appointment of Pemberton and the recent decision to bring Fores ladies into the club are all very positive. On the whole too (the exciting, but brief, fliration with Jenas aside), recruitment of players has been efficient and sensible. Of course, the sacking of SOD has done a lot to dent trust, but just like I shall not be wearing a tea towel to Wednesday just yet, I also will continue to judge them on outcomes, not perception. So far, I think they’re about 50/50 on things we can judge, which although half bad, is also half good too.
Thanks for your comments, I agree entirely with what you are saying. I hope I found a balance in what I wrote between highlighting why I have concerns but also not turning those concerns into an attack on the owners. There are some genuine positive and some genuine concerns and we need to balance them. For me the youth structure and the inclusion of the ladies team into the club are very pleasing (I hope to write about both in the near future).
Great blog, and some great points. Hope to read more blogs like this in the future, keep up the great work.
I think the aim has been for the Al-Hasawis to come in, have 6 months to look at how the management within the club operates, and make decisions from there. Perhaps the Burt removal has been on the cards for a while, but something happened to expedite it (maybe the fact we’ve been linked with the same transfer targets for the last 5 years may have something to do with it), and Fawaz’ decision (he never seems to make any decision ‘lightly’) was brought in by McLeish’s concerns over a lack of progress signings wise. I think the focus placed on getting the academy structure at the club sorted has been a fantastic bit of work, and needs continuing if we are to make any sort of progress on that front (although the inclusion of Blake in a matchday squad, and Darlows progression to the first team is encouraging), and is definitely a long term project.
I’m not worrying about anything yet, perhaps the owners have realised that our lack of progress over the last decade has been due to the top end management and not the managers so to speak..
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