Is selling Reid the answer to our problems?
02/01/04 | by Alex Walker

The news that Forest have rejected a £2.5m bid from Tottenham for our young star will be welcomed by fans who, after recent giveaways on the transfer market, wouldn't have been entirely surprised if the Reds had accepted such a low offer. But the language being used by the manager is not to say "hands off", more like "hands in pockets".

"It's by no means certain we are going to sell Andy and I'm merely reacting to questions which are put my way." - Way to reassure us, Harty!

Andy himself has only gone as far as saying that he will consider himself a Nottingham Forest player until "someone tells me otherwise". And while Hart says he is not "actively trying to encourage bids", we have become a selling club and it seems inevitable that, if the right bid comes in, we will be selling Reid and he won't put up much of an argument.

And meeting up with David Pleat at a Wimbledon game a few days ago hardly gives the impression of not "actively trying to encourage bids", whether it was innocent scouting or not.

Given Forest's recent record of selling star players, the question is not whether they will sell Reid, but how much they intend on getting for him. About £5m seems reasonable, just to pluck a figure out of the air. It's what we sold Jenas for and their talents are comparable.

Somewhere inside the club, the decision has been made to sell for the right price and Reid has a preset transfer value. All the players do. That is why transfers out of the club happen so quickly these days - the Marlon deal was done and dusted before anyone without inside connections knew a bid had even been made. We don't know who decides the value, or what the values are, but it is a sign of our times as a selling club that there are no longer players considered "indispensable".

Of course, we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are still in massive debt. The papers may have stopped referring to us as "cash-strapped Nottingham Forest", but we are still very strapped for cash indeed. That debt must be serviced somehow, but the mistake the board have made is in thinking that the only way to clear it is to sell players. Promotion to the Premiership would also pull us out of the red for the first time in years, but that is a high-risk goal and one that Doughty is no longer willing to sanction.

Our current plan of breeding top quality youngsters and selling them for a few million each is also risky. We are possibly about to rid ourselves of the best youth coach in the country - without Hart it seems unlikely that we'd be able to continue churning out the required standard of player. Eventually the source will run dry and we won't have anybody of the quality of Jenas, Prutton or Reid to sell when we need a cash boost, and we've already seen what can happen when you take key players out of the team. When we run out of decent youngsters, we are left with nothing.

Selling Reidy makes financial sense if it means we can write off another chunk of the debt. Clearly Doughty is not overly concerned with the performance of the team for the moment, preferring to concentrate his efforts on running the club on a sound financial basis.

Take Reid out of the current team and we lose the only creative spark we've had over the past five months (except Harewood). Considering we can't win at the moment with him in the team, the prospect of Spring without him is little comfort as we slide towards relegation.

There is no point putting one player - no matter how good - higher on the priorities list than the club's long-term survival. Just because the debt is out of sight, doesn't mean it should be out of mind. We need to sell players to keep in business.

However, taking the one shining light out of our team of no-hopers could have an effect opposite to that desired by the board. Relegation is a real worry now and should it come to that, the club would be virtually out of business anyway, no matter how many players were sold. The Second Division could not support Forest.

If we're going to sell Reid this month, we need to be sure of replacing him adequately. Given our recent record of replacing departed players, that seems unlikely to happen. On the other hand, £5m would come in very handy for filling a few of those gaps in our squad - a right winger, a left back, another forward perhaps, and of course a new player for the left.

There's little point in being sentimental about this. We all love Reid at the moment, but we can no longer guide our transfer activities with our hearts. All our other heroes have been sold and losing Reid will no be worse than Prutton or Harewood's departure.

What must be our main concern are the long-term prospects of the club. If my theory is correct, then the club have already decided that selling Reid will be the best option. It may prove otherwise if we cannot avoid relegation because we don't have anyone to score the goals.