The Next of Kin
12/02/04 | by Matt Comley

Thursday evening, two days before a new era finally gets underway at the City Ground, and, may I say, not a moment too soon. Following the completely justified sacking of Paul Hart by chairman Nigel Doughty, and the subsequent appointment of Joe Kinnear, there's is a buzz around the club not felt for a long time.

In a small way I do feel a little sorry for Paul Hart, but I'm hardly going to cry over it. He seems a genuinely nice bloke, one of football's good guys, but, he sadly wasn't up to the job of taking Nottingham Forest where we all wanted - the Premiership. The performances in the last 4-5 months have been utterly unacceptable and at times downright disgraceful. The buck, as it always has done in football, stops with the manager.

People harp on about Hart having his "hands tied" etc. Tripe. Doughty himself has been on local radio this week, confirming the last player we had to sell for financial reasons was Jermaine Jenas. The rest were down to Paul Hart's discretion. Some of them were acceptable, such as getting £2.5 million for David Prutton before his contract ran out, but many of them were rank bad management.

Not even offering Jack Lester and Jon Hjelde contracts, as confirmed by the club, was criminal. Then you have the sale of Marlon Harewood and other contentious issues such as Brennan. Added to this is Paul's appalling record in the transfer market bringing in failures so far in the shape of Oyen, Stewart, Jess before this season, now King and Taylor (although granted, I do think King will eventually come good).

Couple this with a history of being tactically outwitted consistently by his managerial counterparts, seemingly not able to motivate the players anymore, and a record of two wins in our last 25 matches, failing to score a goal for over 12 hours and it was clear he had to go. I advocated his sacking months ago - it didn't happen, but at least sense has prevailed in the end.

Anyway, of enough of Mr Hart - the club has moved onto bigger and better things in the form of Joe Kinnear.

At first I was a little hesitant. After all, he has been out of the game a while. One press conference was all it took to change mine and many other Trickies' minds. He was at ease with the press, and seemed utterly focused on what he wanted, something Paul never was.

His track record at Wimbledon, and keeping them in the Premiership for seven years, and taking Luton up at the first attempt is clearly very good.

Since then he has already used his contacts within the game (again, something Hart couldn't do) and gotten 'Tank' Rogers and Andy Impey in on loan from Leicester. They may not be world beaters, but they are players in positions we badly lack, at left back and right midfield. There is the promise of more to come. Hart took three weeks to get Michael Chopra in on loan - Kinnear took one day to get two players. That, ladies and gentleman, is a manager.

So I hope all Trickies get down the City Ground this Saturday, get behind the chairman, the new gaffer and especially get behind the players and roar the club to a win to lift us out of the relegation zone and start the Big Fat Joe era off in style. Anything less just wouldn't be cricket, would it?