lost that loving feeling - Total eclipse of the Hart

I have a number of seemingly irreconcilable emotions regarding Paul Hart’s dismissal – but then, the man himself has told me how he sees the Forest fan as a fickle creature. When the news broke I was horrified, and quite surprised. I think few would deny that the Coventry game was an unacceptably poor performance, but that had been proceeded by a number of solid displays where we were unlucky to fall to defeat or merely get a draw.

And so, having attended the Coventry game with friends – and had a few too many beers before, and one after - I’d got home and was snoozing on the settee when my phone rang to inform me of the news. My initial thought was that I was still asleep and dreaming. When that proved not to be the case I was angry. Fuming.

And this is where the problem comes in – if, as I do, you believe that the decision to dismiss Paul Hart was an unfair one, then there has to be an element of board-level meddling theories that you have to buy into. If you take Mr Doughty’s rather simplistic “we’re in the results business” stance, then you could say indeed that Hart’s position as manager was no longer tenable.

Let’s go back to the end of last season and the start of this – my season ticket went up by 50% from £200 to £300. The words of Nigel Doughty on Radio Nottingham reassured us that this was because we were seriously pushing for promotion next term, following our defeat in the playoffs. Fair enough, I thought – we’re going to build on our team and go for it.

Not so – his restrictive wage policy meant that players like Scimeca and Brennan left for pastures new, and many of our transfer targets were unable to be lured into joining Nottingham Forest. Nigel Doughty will say their reasons weren’t financial, but common sense knows the likes of West Ham and Norwich clearly have more flexible wage policies than us. And so, we’re left with a squad missing crucial elements.

I still think Hart’s decision to dispense with the services of Jack Lester was an error and, yes, some of the brunt of our problems have to be brought to his door too.

The only fact we know is that for whatever reason we didn’t bring in any of the names we were linked with over the summer. Instead we bought players who – Hart said himself – were brought in as “back up when we get injuries and suspensions”. These are the players who are turning out for us week in, week out.

Most notable is Gareth Taylor, who, let’s face it, hasn’t set the world alight, but he’s been carrying an injury and does consistently give 100% effort. To say I’ve been disappointed with his technical ability is an understatement. But we bought him to chuck on as an option – before Johnno cruelly broke his leg, which I see as the downfall of our season.

When a club has been asset-stripped like ours to bring the cost down, you are also going to bring the quality down – it’s inevitable. Rather than releasing funds for transfer fees, it would have made more sense for funds to be released to cover enhanced contracts to players that have been available for either nominal fees or on free contracts – we should have learned that from how we’ve lost players recently.

I have no idea how the discussions between Mr Hart and Mr Doughty went, or whether that’s something they discussed at all – but to me it would seem like a logical solution to our problem. Whatever way you look at it, Paul Hart was criminally under-resourced to meet anywhere near the expectations he undoubtedly had for himself, the players had of him, and the fans had of him.

Having said that, he consistently had solid backing from the supporters, who seemed to understand the magnitude of the constraint placed upon his operations.

Now we come to why my feelings are having problems finding a synergy. At a ‘fans forum’ event, I asked Paul what he thought about the supporters. He said “Well you’re fickle”, and at the time I must confess to some affront. Of course, his comment wasn’t levelled personally at me, but as a fan who has stuck by Forest through some lean times and a few good ones, I felt my feelings were pretty unwavering.

I find it hard to reconcile the situation into a ‘Hart vs Doughty’ split – it doesn’t work like that. Without the generosity of our owner we wouldn’t be here – we weren’t canny enough to ‘do a Leicester’ and use administration to our advantage - and we would probably have folded so we’d all be supporting AFC Forest.

However, I suspect Doughty has had a hand in manufacturing Hart’s downfall - he has used a Machiavellian standard of playing off both media and representatives to ensure that Hart is the scapegoat for all our woes. Not to mention using a certain “discerning” website to propagate these views for some time (albeit through an intermediary “associate”).

And so the decision has been made – I don’t like it, but as I don’t intend to abandon Forest, I must accept it. I do think that Joe Kinnear will be a good appointment considering our placing and his proven skills in getting teams in poor positions results on a shoestring, which sounds like just the credentials we need.

So to conclude, I’m terribly sad to see the end of Paul Hart, particularly on such a sour note, and I wish him all the very best of luck for the future. For the record, I think he was harshly dealt with and manufactured into a scapegoat. But that’s done – I can’t change it and, as a fan, I have to activate the ‘fickle switch’ and transfer my allegiance to the new manager, which looks to be Mr Kinnear.

Welcome, Joe, and may you fulfill both your and our potential and work to bring our once proud football club a little closer to where we want to be. All I can do is urge supporters to keep coming to games, keep backing the team, the manager, and each other – it’s unlikely we can make a measurable difference to how things go, but it can’t do any harm to turn up in numbers and make plenty of noise. If nothing else, it will improve gate receipts.