Left Brian: March

Forest 2014-15

Ayup mi’duck

There is one truth in football – when results are going for you the mood is good and no one looks beneath the surface; when results go bad, everything at the club is questioned.

When we don’t play well I hear grumblings about youth setup, match day experience, and price of tickets. When we win games, no one really cares about that stuff.

Perhaps this is a lesson Fawaz Al-Hasawi needs to learn. For a man who interacts with fans so much on social media, he needs to learn that he will get a wide range of negative comments about all things #NFFC related when we’re not winning games. His very motive for being here will generally be questioned, not least of all by me. It’s for that reason that when he decided enough was enough with Stuart Pearce, he did so after months of comments from disgruntled fans, quick to forget the first ten games of the season and top of the league position. It’s also for this reason that right now, on the back of a one defeat in eight run since Dougie Freedman came to the club that his Twitter timeline is likely filled with the kind of sycophantic comments he appears to court. We do have to remember, though, that Pearce went ten games without defeat at the start of the season. Hopefully Danny Mills will pop up at some point soon to let us know if Freedman can sustain this form.

Do you fall prey to this fickle nature? With results going our way the confirmation bias reaches fever pitch; people now want to believe just how much money he’s put into the club and that he has the club at heart. There’s still a more hardcore group for whom results in the immediacy don’t change their opinion, but by and large the vocal majority of fans standing by Stuart Pearce now look for songs that contain the word ‘boogie’ to substitute for Dougie.

Doogie Nights

Ever since Fawaz and his cohort took charge at the City Ground I’ve been minded to look across the river. When Munto finance took control of the Magpies the fans welcomed them with open arms. They promised money, success, and everything a football fan could want. Their mysteriousness pointed to money from the Middle East which is, of course, the Holy Grail for a football club wishing to be bankrolled to glory. Those special words, ‘Middle East investment’, conjure up visions of Manchester City lifting the Premier League title and make fans of any club daydream about gushing, limitless petrodollars, about their Middle Eastern-inspired day in the sun. No one wants to look beneath the surface; no one wants to think that maybe, just maybe, the most important of those three words is investment, rather than Middle East. Do we still believe that Fawaz is an eccentric billionaire who fell in love with Forest during the 70s? What’s the alternative? Why is there an influx of investors in the game? Just what does Fawaz want from his ownership of Nottingham Forest?

So, a New Era at the City Ground recently dawned. Indeed, I believe it’s the seventh New Era at the City Ground since Fawaz took control. Like almost all new eras, it has started well: six wins and a draw from eight, averaging more than three goals per game, and the team looking like they care about what they’re doing. The last point frustrates me. Those same players played with no passion toward the end of the Stuart Pearce New Era, yet now, all of a sudden, they’re world beaters. Besides bringing back Danny Collins at centre back and swapping the goalkeeper back to Karl Darlow, it’s hard to pinpoint why. Which irks me. The lack of effort under Pearce shows, to me at least, that the players forced Fawaz’s hand. Between them they’ve conspired, either consciously or unconsciously, to place themselves above Stuart Pearce in the pecking order at Forest and I just don’t like that.

Forest through and through

I bear no ill will to Dougie Freedman. I actually quite like him; he seems nice in interviews and he’s started off well. I hope that if results turn and we go through a period of poor form again both the players and fans remember this period. I hope they remember how motivated they are right now to play for this club, and that the fans remember how they’ve now backed the appointment. Unfortunately, though, that old inalienable truth about football will obviously rear its head again. When we win, no one complains; when we lose everything is scrutinised.

Speaking of Dougie’s results, 19 points from 24 is a pretty impressive haul. Beating Bournemouth again has just piqued the interest of those above us, and a few fans are now speaking in hushed tones about a late playoff push. Difficult one to call here. Should our form continue we could be in with a shot. However, in the eight games since Pearce’s departure, with 19 points added to our haul, we’re now only 4 points closer to the playoffs than when Psycho left. With only a handful of games to go, it looks like a massive mountain to climb. We are now in with a shot, though. With Derby’s faltering form of late, and the fact that they now have to play just about everyone else in the top 6, I’m starting to dream that perhaps they can be the team that slip to seventh on the last day of the season, as we sneak into sixth. That would make Young Ben Osborn’s goal at the iPro even sweeter.

All that being said, it does look to me like the season is pretty much over. We’ve gone for the Goldilocks approach here – not too near the top, not too near the bottom.

One notable point of late that needs emphasising is the quality of goals from all over the park. Osborn and Gardner look like they’re enjoying the one-upmanship regarding how outrageously well they can score goals. Add in to the mix the incredible Collymore-esque goals coming from Antonio lately, and we’re actually really good fun to watch at times.

Fawaz: what's his game?

This brings about an interesting dilemma for Dougie. If we believe the playoffs might be a bridge too far, given the points gap that has to be clawed back, and are content that we’ve avoided relegation, would now not be the ideal time to build for next season? We’ve lost Britt for a year, so need to make sure we have some strike force. We’ve sold Lascelles and Darlow, so need replacements there. And we have an academy seemingly bursting with talent. Would it not make sense, in this case, to begin using players like De Vries in place of Darlow to establish himself as number one? Would it not make sense to bring young Kyle Walker in from the youth team to get first team experience ready for the next campaign? I can’t help but think that if the season is a write-off, we should be using every minute of game time to establish our squad for next season, especially since, given our inability to operate in the transfer market, we have to look to our academy.

Or maybe Dougie thinks we can make the playoffs. If we do, it looks as though he’ll certainly see the end of his three-month contract – making him the first manager under Fawaz to reach the end of one.

Today we visit the only club in the league who can compete with our off-field craziness lately. Away trips to Leeds are often fun: even Cotterill managed to lead us to 3 points in a 10-goal thriller there a few years back. If Cotter-nil can get us seven goals there, just how many can Freedman muster for us? Providing, of course, the linesmen have read up on the offside rule this time…

I’ll see thee.