Time for Doughty and Kinnear to prove themselves
21/04/04 | by Alex Walker

The trouble with Paul Hart was that he was not forthcoming enough. After every game he would praise the team’s efforts (“the lads worked their socks off”) no matter how badly the result had gone and he was never willing to single out any individuals for criticism. This may have been his way of keeping moral high, but this kind of non-committal cost him his job. While the club was collapsing around him, he kept quiet. It was not until it was far too late that he spoke up about circumstances beyond his control. With Joe Kinnear, we thankfully do not have this problem.

Kinnear knows that he was second choice behind Nigel Doughty’s pal Hoddle. He will also have some idea of the mess Hart allowed himself to get into having had a decent look at the inner-workings of the club. Therefore, he will be eager to make sure the same thing does not happen to him. He plans to make damn sure that just because he wasn’t Doughty’s preference for boss, the chairman can’t take advantage of the situation.

In fact, he seems to be using the situation to his advantage. Doughty’s previous managers have both been quiet, reserved characters unlikely to speak up against the club. But where Kinnear differs from Platt and Hart is that he will always be prepared to speak his mind, even if it puts himself at risk – he has already got in trouble this season for verbally attacking referees, and he is prepared to lay criticism at the doors of players who deserve it.

In rushing to appoint a manager with the right credentials, Doughty has landed himself with a managerial liability who threatens to undermine the chairman’s power and influence. Kinnear will not sit idly by and let the club sell his best players and not provide the resources to replace them, as Hart did. He will come out and let the world know the wrongs that are happening and what he wants done about it.

The way Kinnear has rescued this season’s campaign has meant that keeping hold of him was vital, not only for the future success of the football club, but to keep the fans happy as well. In this short time, his abilities as a manager have given Kinnear the same power through popularity that Hart had after he took us to the play-offs.

He has already used this power in negotiating the one-year deal he signed today. Although Doughty may be wary of Kinnear’s out-spoken nature, he will certainly appreciate his skills in management and will have wanted to sign him up to a long-term deal. But instead, Kinnear has got a contract that allows him to walk at any point if things don’t go the way he wants them.

This puts Doughty under huge pressure. If he does not provide Kinnear with the resources he believes he needs, the manager will be off. And no doubt he’d have some unfavourable words for Doughty in the process. It was Hart’s failure to secure himself adequate transfer funds to maintain Forest’s high standing in the league that ultimately led to his downfall. This will not happen with Kinnear – he will be sure of it.

But the deal also puts Kinnear under pressure too. His arrogance is legendary and central to his techniques. He obviously has massive self-belief in himself to do the job in hand or he would not have pressed for such a flimsy contract. He knows within himself that he is worth the money he is now demanding of Doughty, but now it is up to him alone to prove it to everyone else.

This is the biggest job of his career to date and he certainly has no intention of letting it slip away. But, while other managers might have been happy to manage the club on the back of our reputation, Kinnear sees us as the opportunity to turn his impressive track record into trophies. In other words, it is his own reputation he is concerned with, not ours.

We seem to have a manager who shares the ambitions of our chairman – to see Forest back in the Premiership as a powerful force. Now, if Doughty is willing to put up the money Kinnear demands, Kinnear must prove himself to be as good as he thinks he is. This job will be his making if he can succeed, but it could also break him if he fails to make the most of the position he has now created for himself. He will succeed or fail by his own terms.