lost that loving feeling - Rename the club – it’s the only thing that can save us!

Rename the club – it’s the only thing that can save us!
28/01/04 | by Alex Walker

So, the Football League wants to rename Division One the 'Football League Championship'. I thought that’s what it was already called. Are Nottingham Forest not described on our official website and matchday programme as “Football League Champions 1977/78”? Never-the-less, the League is pushing ahead and hiring an expensive marketing company while the majority of its members can barely afford to pay their players, let alone advertising execs.

Re-branding is what companies do when they are failing but want to make it look as if they are doing something. They change their name to something obscure and meaningless, get a silly logo that nobody recognises or associates with the brand, and spend millions in the process. Before we know it, Forest will soon be playing in the 'Ganesha League' – so named after the Hindu God of success. It’s multi-cultural and inspirational. It’s also a load of bollocks so would suit the Football League to a tee.

If this is what the Football League call restructuring, then they must have a faulty dictionary. Two years ago we were talking about the Phoenix League. While the cloak-and-dagger stuff that prompted that discussion was hardly helpful, the Football League did at that time promise a review of how the leagues are organised. Plans for regional divisions and new play-off systems have arisen during the interim, but in the end all we get is a slight name-change.

Just the level of uselessness we have come to expect from a Football League that landed its members in millions worth of debt because, in their hasty greed, they forgot to check the small print of a crucial television deal. FIFA may be corrupt, the FA in the pockets of the richest clubs and the PFA utterly blinkered, but as football governing bodies go, the Football League are just plain useless.

Re-branding smacks of desperation, not inspiration. It will sadly do nothing to help the clubs currently suffocating from lack of funds and might even increase the problems for teams further down the tiers. Perhaps it's time we postponed thoughts of restructuring the way the league works and concentrated on restructuring the way it is run.

Speaking of desperation, things don’t get much more desperate than Forest’s current situation. We’ve just slipped behind Derby after a losing streak longer than Tony Blair’s nose while talking about Iraq. And in the face of this desperate situation, what have the club done?

Absolutely nothing! NFFC are now on par with the Football League in terms of uselessness. Relegation continues to cast a dark shadow over the City Ground, but the club’s management have done nothing to lighten the mood. Paul Hart has failed in all his attempts to get players in on loan, the chairman isn’t willing to risk his stash of transfer money in case Hart continues his record of poor signings, and in the mean time the players cannot lift themselves out of a rut.

Something has got to be done. It is no longer good enough to take comfort in the thought that we’re better than Derby, because we’re not. Through trial and error (mostly error, admittedly), our sheep-bothering neighbours have been trying everything they can to avoid relegation. Forest have done nothing.

Perhaps Forest should head down the same route as the Football League and attempt to re-brand. It’s better than nothing, I suppose. But realistically, just as the Football League needs to actually take some responsible and effective action towards restructuring, Forest need to stop paying lip service to avoiding relegation and actually do something.