lost that loving feeling - Season Review 2001/02

It’s amazing how much the performance of your local rivals affects the way you see your own team. Normally, had Forest finished in 16th (our worst league position for over 25 years) then we would not be a happy lot. But with Derby and Leicester nicely positioned at the bottom of the table with lovely red R’s next to their names, I’m pretty satisfied with the way things went this year.

It was a season that, I suspect, will be remembered for the events off the pitch as much as for those on it. In October, the PFA threatened to bring the game to a standstill over a dispute with the Football League over the distribution of TV revenue. In November, the controversial Phoenix League plans kicked off endless debate about the structuring of the leagues. And as the first season of their license to show Nationwide League games came to an end, ITV Digital went into administration leaving dozens of clubs with an uncertain financial future.

On the pitch, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal battled it out in an exciting Premiership title race - the closest for years. England manager Sven Goran Eriksson led the team to the World Cup and his captain David Beckham’s foot was all over the papers as he suffered a pre-World Cup injury scare.

And Nottingham had it’s fair share of action over a long, hard season.

Before the season had even started, Forest’s preparations were thrown into disarray. On the day Forest were meant to start their series of pre-season friendlies in Holland, David Platt quit as manager to become England U21 coach. The board acted quickly in appointing Paul Hart as his replacement, Hart signing the very same day.

Hart’s appointment was a very popular choice with the fans. Platt’s time with the club had been troubled and fans were divided over their feelings for him. After his impressive work with at the youth academy (leading the U19s to championship glory), Hart’s reputation was excellent and he was seen as the right man to steer Forest what looked to be a very difficult period.

The Reds’ debts were well documented and it was made clear that Hart would be given no money to spend on bringing new players to the club. Because of this, Hart would need to rely on the young players he had nurtured at the academy.

With only a month to go before the season started, Hart set about trying out new players. In a number of pre-season games he pitted youth against experience, playing a young team in the first half and a more senior team in the second, often with the youngsters performing better.

The first game was at home to Sheffield United. With one of the youngest sides in years, Forest totally out-classed the Blades in the first half, taking the lead with a Marlon Harewood header. But the lack of experience told as Forest conceded a late equaliser.

In the opening few games, Hart’s Forest side quickly established themselves as one of the most talented passing sides in the division. With the passing game second nature to the players, thanks to Paul Hart’s influence in their developing years, Forest’s young team quickly caught the attention of the rest of the league.

Despite losing to Barnsley in the second game, Forest then beat Hartlepool in the Worthington Cup and came out 4-2 winners against Crystal Palace at the City Ground.

They then proved to have spirit beyond their years when they held Coventry to a nil-nil draw despite two sending-offs.

But despite a promising start, clues began to appear as to just how tough this season would actually be. Andy Johnson was allowed to leave in September, heading for West Brom as a result of his refusal to sit on the bench during the season-opener.

Despite being club captain, Chris Bart-Williams looked set to be next out of the door as Forest desperately cut their wage bill. Having put in a transfer request in the summer, Bartman was looking to further his career with a move to the Premiership. When he turned down a move to Birmingham City (for obvious reasons), Hart was told by the board that he could not pick Bart-Williams again this season. Presumably this was to encourage him to decided on his future in order that Forest could cash before his contract ran out the following summer.

Bartman never played for Forest again and eventually spent the remainder of the season on loan at Charlton.

Despite the unrest this caused among supporters, Forest picked up three league wins in September and progressed to the third round of the Worthington Cup with a penalty shoot-out win over Stockport.

By now, Forest were attracting plaudits far and wide. Rotherham manager Ronnie Moore has praised the Reds as “the best them they had played this season” and commentators on ITV had called Forest “the best passing side in the league”.

Forest were picking up good results and hovering outside the play-off zone. During a 3-3 draw with high-flyers Millwall, Stern John got a hat-trick which kicked off a good period of scoring form for Forest’s previously ill-fated striker.

He and David Johnson scored as Forest got their first away league win at Watford, but Johnson wasn’t to enjoy the same success this season as John.

The arrival of 30-year-old Nicky Summerbee on a pay-as-you-play contract added some fresh ideas to the Forest midfield which had by now lost Alan Rogers to Leicester City.

But November was to be a very hard month for Forest. More details about the club’s dire financial situation emerged as the board failed to provide the stock market with details of the last year’s figures. This led to Forest’s shares being frozen and the Reds were held up by the national press as a club in a perilous state.

To make matters worse, Forest form dropped off over the month with poor results against West Brom, Walsall, Preston and Portsmouth. There was little cause for optimism as the year’s end approached, but Forest did manage to end on a high note with impressive wins over Norwich and Coventry.

On New Year’s day, Forest and Birmingham shared the points for the second time of the season. Stern John’s 26th minute strike was to be Forest’s last for a month and John’s last for the club.

In January, he and Jim Brennan were due to take part in the Gold Cup with Trinidad & Tobago and Canada respectively.

Before they left, Forest were knocked out of the FA Cup by Sheffield United and once they had gone, Forest could only manage 3 bore-draws. But there was at least some good news that month.

The club’s AGM had been called off just minutes into proceedings, but a few weeks later the reason for this became clear. At the Extraordinary General Meeting at the Royal Moat House Hotel, Nigel Doughty presented share holders with his proposed take-over plans.

He also pledged to invest £5m to help reduce the club’s borrowings which we now discovered had reached a staggering £20m. Providing shareholders voted in favour of his plan (which involved issuing more shares allowing Doughty to purchase a majority) he would take over as chairman from Eric Barnes in the summer.

Doughty’s emergence from the sidelines was welcome news and gave us some idea of the future of the club, but in the short-term things were still looking awkward.

Stern John’s future with Forest looked doomed with the news that his contract contained a goal-scoring clause: for every goal over 15 John scored, Forest would have to pay his old club, Columbus Crew, £30,000. As he had so far managed 14, his absence from the team that drew 0-0 at home to Portsmouth on the 30th was rightly treated with much suspicion and the next day he was sold to Birmingham for a measly £750,000.

Not content with losing their top-scorer, Forest then sold one of their best midfielders as Jermaine Jenas joined Newcastle for £5m.

Although this was not the best news with regard to improving matters on the pitch, it certainly helped ease the financial pressure. In fact, with the space of two weeks Forest had raised £10m (£5m for Jenas and £5m from Doughty) which could be taken off the debt.

Despite losing Jenas and John, the Reds pulled themselves out of the depths of despair with a vital 3-1 win over Carlton Palmer’s Stockport.

In this game, Marlon Harewood created one, scored another and forced County defender Roget into a spectacular own-goal. In the weeks and months that followed, Harewood would seem to be making the most of his chance and netting an impressive amount of goals.

But despite Marlon netting penalties against Millwall (home) and Burnley (away), Forest only managed a point from these two games against the promotion chasers, followed by a dull nil-nil draw with Grimsby at the City Ground and defeat away to Bradford.

Forest got their second win of the year at Rotherham, Lester and Harewood scoring. This might have signaled that Forest’s fortunes were on the up, especially after they followed it up with a two-two draw against league-leaders Wolves.

But another nil-nil at home to Wimbledon proved that there was still a long way to go before Forest could relax this season.

This was quickly followed by four straight defeats against Gillingham, West Brom, Man City and Walsall.

Suddenly, with three games left to play, Forest found themselves in danger of relegation. It would take a strong effort from the teams below, but with the Reds’ form at an all-time low, it was a worrying risk.

But Paul Hart successfully lifted his team’s spirits and they comfortably beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-0 to gain the three points needed to secure safety for another year.

It was certainly a big relief after such a difficult season. There then followed a draw at home to Crewe (who were relegated as a result) and a defeat at Preston who just missed out on the play-offs despite beating us two-nil

It was a disappointing end to a season that started with such promise and vigor. But ever since the turn of the year, Forest’s young team had been looking very tired and, despite a wealth of imagination in the early games, had seemingly run out of ideas.

In fact, the point in Forest’s season where it went from a young team beating the odds, to a lack of experience proving too much of a hurdle, can be traced right back to the FA Cup defeat to Sheffield United.

It may have seemed like a meaningless tie at the time - that would certainly explain the poor performance from the players - but it was probably our best chance of reaching Cardiff this season. Despite the constant talking-up of our chances by the manager and players, we were never going to close the gap between ourselves and the play-off zone (which at the time was about 8 points), especially with the further reductions in the squad that were going to follow.

Since that cup defeat, Forest only managed three more wins - none of them at home.

If Forest had managed to put together a decent cup run, it would have given the players something to get motivated about. But alas they spent the last four months of the season just going through the motions, only finding a bit of heart when relegation was threatening.

I know that the season was due to finish early for the World Cup, but surely not as early as January?

That said, it was somewhat of a relief to reach the end of the season. The team that received universal praise for their style of play through September and October were no longer interesting to watch.

It was back to the same old rubbish that Forest fans have become somewhat accustomed to in recent years. A combination of tired legs with no-one left to replace them, a lack of ideas in how to break down opposition who had all-too-soon cottoned on to how to beat Paul Hart’s inexperienced Forest, and nothing to motivate the players over the final stretch.

But such a poor end to the season is hardly surprising, all things considered. We knew it would be tough. The talk all through the summer was of cutting the wage bill to repair the damage done trying to get back into the Premiership the previous two seasons.

But I doubt many people knew just how tough it would be.

As Forest’s financial plight became public knowledge, we were at the mercy of the bank to whom we owed a great deal of money.

We were no longer in a position to turn down bids or offer new contracts to our star players, and we ended up losing many of them for reduced prices.

Were it not for the timely intervention of Doughty, things could well have gotten worse, with Williams and Prutton following Jenas out of the door.

It would also have meant that work on the academy would have stopped, in effect cutting off the production line of young players which, it has become obvious this season, is our only hope of bringing fresh talent to the team.

The importance of the academy was again highlighted as the U19s won their division title for the third time running. Although they failed to retain the national championship, losing to Liverpool in the play-off semi-finals, it was still a great achievement for the youngsters as they had lost numerous key players to first team duty, not to mention the manager and mentor who had guided them all so far. New academy Nick Marshall and his team had obviously done a splendid job and it is encouraging that Doughty has made it possible for it to continue.

Even after the season had finished, more squad players were released on frees. But on the positive side of things, Doughty’s proposals from January were finally approved by shareholders after months of legal fine-tuning.

So with Doughty as the new chairman and hopefully some kind of stability achieved, there is hope that next season we can get Forest moving in the right direction again.

But there is also concern that, with the finances still not in an ideal state (slight understatement there) and made even more precarious by the ITV Digital collapse, we are set for another season like this one.

The club went on record in January to say that none of the academy players would need to be sold for at least a year.

Which is all very well, but if we have improved significantly enough through the experience gained this year to be in a position of challenging the play-offs come January next year, we may forced to sell one or two of the key players of the campaign.

Unless some long-term solution to the financial problems can be found, we are in danger of becoming stuck in an endless cycle of producing quality youngsters, only to sell them to reduce our seemingly endless debts.

On the somewhat bright side, it seems that most clubs in this division are in a similar position, but without the luxury of a first-rate youth academy to fall back on. As the football bubble bursts, Forest might well find themselves better off than most at the other end of the tunnel.

But this can only be achieved through strong management from Doughty - in whom I have the utmost faith - and even stronger management from Hart who needs to keep the spirits of his side high throughout these hardships.

I don’t think we’ll be challenging for promotion next year. I thought we’d finish in midtable this, and we can barely say we managed that. This is just testament to how much of a struggle beyond our wildest expectations this season has been.

We've struggled for goals all year. Well at least since Stern John left. Although Marlon has come through with impressive form over the last leg, it is obvious that he lacks the experience and composure to be the sole answer to Forest's problems.

We've suffered from inexperience and lack of composure at the back. On far too many occasions we have let in late goals costing us valuable points. We may have had the comparative veterans of Hjelde and Scimeca, but they could not compensate for the rest of the team.

It would be unrealistic to expect our young players to have learned enough in this difficult season that they will be ready to go for gold in the next.

But they will have learned. They will have learned more in this season than in any of those years at the academy, and providing the board can stop the club falling apart, they will continue to learn.

We will improve next season - we have to. If we don’t then Forest will be relegated, making financial doom almost inevitable.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just a pity that it is such a long tunnel.