lost that loving feeling - Learning this season's lessons

At precisely 14:49 on Sunday the ninth of March 2004, referee Dermot Gallagher sounded three sharp blasts of his whistle to end the game at the Hawthorns. It wasn’t just a meaningless end-of-season clash between a promoted West Brom and a safe Forest that he ended though: with those three sharp blasts Dermot Gallagher signalled the end of nine months of absolute torture for Nottingham Forest supporters.

The 2002/03 season had seen a meteoric rise to significance for Paul Hart’s Reds. Having flirted with financial peril and lost an array of talent less than a year previous, nobody could have predicted the revolution that was to unfold. An onslaught of passing football and outright attacking was to prompt a charge up the league table, which was to culminate in an emotional adventure to the unexplored peril of the play-offs.

Such was the manner of this improvement that the majority of all Forest supporters dwindled away the summer months discussing the promotion campaign that was surely to follow. There simply wasn’t a Red to be found without boundless expectations and Forest’s delay in making a significant summer signing didn’t seem to hinder the dreamers.

By July 23 and the friendly with Ajax, a number of first-team players had left the football club and nobody of apparent worth was even being linked with a move - yet still we dreamed. Surely the source of all that is good and right, Paul Hart, would not take us into the new season without making a decent signing? Surely this ‘large and ambitious’ football club was not prepared to risk washing every last drop of their progress back down the drain of nothingness from whence it rose? Anyone monitoring Forest’s progress at the time will know that those two ‘surelys’ were to be wholly ignored and an utter disaster was to follow.

A shaky and altogether stop-starting first few months soon gave way to a relentless process of feeble efforts and capitulations. On Saturday, October 25, Andy Reid clinched a late Forest winner away at struggling Bradford, providing the last three points that Paul Hart was ever to claim as Forest manager. Fifteen games without a win followed, a baron sequence that took Forest into the relegation zone and cost Harty his job. Disbelief at the change in fortunes had become discontent by this stage and most supporters welcomed the decision to sack the manager. Others chose to blame Nigel Doughty, but in any case Forest were in danger and needed urgent help.

At the time, fans were still expressing their shock at quite how bad things really were, but on sensible reflection it’s no small wonder why Forest fell from grace so heftily. The foundations of the play-off side had been, quite simply, pulled apart. The most important player on every part of the pitch for Forest was, for whatever extenuating reason, no longer doing the job they once had been doing.

Michael Dawson (now back to his best) was a shadow of his former self in the wake of several hamstring injuries and glandular fever, midfield catalyst Riccy Scimeca had gaily moved on to Leicester City and David Johnson had broken his leg. Matters were not helped by in-form Marlon Harewood joining West Ham and long-overdue new additions Marlon King and Gareth Taylor both displaying a total inability to make an impact. Not only had Paul Hart failed to make any worthwhile signings when preparing for the new season, he was now failing to motivate them in any which way and it was looking like just shy of £1.5million had simply been wasted on this new-look attack.

Indeed the 2003/04 season, in contrast to the one it followed, probably epitomises world of football today - fickle. Just twelve months ago we were sticking “We Love You Harty” stickers on every flat surface in the East Midlands and looking forward to a Hart-delivered Premiership existence. Now the prolonged stealth of these free promotional stickers and the photographs of a Forest fronting Harty will soon be all that defines the fading memory of the Hart-era. Living proof that in this ‘business’, you must never draw too many conclusions and never take progress for granted.

We all lamented Nigel Doughty for not opening his wallet to Paul Hart and allowing the millions to pour out, but Doughty’s conduct was very much justified considering the way new signings responded to Hart and actually performed under his stewardship. We all also naively believed that because of one good season, Paul Hart was going to be the man to take us blazing into the Premiership, as well as presuming promises would be delivered. Presuming and jumping to incensed criticisms is the one thing we, collectively, should never have done.

They say only a fool makes the same mistake twice and it looks as though shrewd businessman Doughty is making tracks to avoid doing just that. Joe Kinnear has made a phenomenal impact since joining the club - who in the world would have predicted finishing a respectable 14th back in January? But rather than promise a boundless transfer budget and a lucrative contract, Kinnear has a conservative one-year deal and a stringent financial agreement with ‘the chief’.

Kinnear is going to be backed financially and will certainly have some leeway. Yet one thing’s for sure: if he wants to make any big-money purchases, Joe will have to pick up the bill personally through selling assets he already possesses (*muffled cough* Reidy!).

Kinnear has already displayed a knack for delivering on promises and losing just two of his first seventeen games in charge of the club will leave us all with a relieved, optimistic grin on our faces. His ‘wide circle of contacts’ has seen five players through the door already, albeit primarily on loan. Moreover, all of the players he has signed have more than done their job and this efficiency is likely to lead to much more money provided by a more-trusting Chairman.

We can all have great reason to be optimistic about what is to happen next season, but remember our lesson: things don’t always turn out as they should and we all probably said the same thing at the close of last season.

The thing is, we’ve now got a gaffer that actually does do what he wants to do. I’m not getting ahead of myself this time, but I’m confident enough to make at least one promise: next season’s Nottingham Forest will be very different to the one that finished this and it’s going to be yet another ‘rollercoaster ride’. Enjoy summer.