Morons 1 Kinnear 0
16/12/04 | by Alex Walker

Christmas has come early for Forest fans. While thousands around the world are anticipating the arrival of one fat man dressed in red, those in Nottingham have been hoping to see the back of another, and today they got their wish. It is remarkable how happy Joe Kinnear’s departure has made so many fans, but that just speaks volumes about the way he had alienated the fans on a personal basis. Not many managers would enrage loyal supporters so much that they were prepared to protest against him. But, as LTLF has learned, it was in fact the threat of these protests which forced Kinnear out.

Sources within the club have suggested that Joe was in fact scheduled to step down next week, but the looming prospect of demonstrations ahead of Friday’s game against Leicester City – in full view of the Sky cameras – was just too much for the club to stomach and they persuaded Joe to walk out earlier. Kinnear may have claimed that he was “not bothered” about what anybody else thought about him, but it is clear that the rest of the club was, representing a substantial victory for fan power.

It will be a sizeable dent in Joe’s ego that, after having arrogantly asserted that the decision regarding his future was entirely his, it was actually the fans who forced him out – fans whom he has done his thorough best to insult and belittle during his time here. He has undermined the club’s historic achievements, accused put-upon supporters of unrealistic ambitions (when it was him and the club who spent all summer talking about promotion), routinely insulted our intelligence by promising signings that never arrived, described those who dared criticise him as “idiots” and “morons” and, even on the night before resigning, he had the audacity to tell his critics that the reason for their anger was because they didn’t receive enough love from their parents.

This brief digest of his many cock-ups would probably be enough to offend the uninitiated, so it is easy to see why the Forest faithful will take such pleasure in his departure after having to put up with this kind of blatant lack of respect on an almost daily basis. Most managers would have struggled to keep their jobs having taken their team to the murky depths Kinnear has plunged, but they probably wouldn’t have been the subject of planned mass protests. Kinnear brought this level of feeling upon himself, not through bad management (although he was certainly guilty of this), but from thinking that the opinions of the fans didn’t matter.

You might say the club as a whole have been culpable of this in recent years, but it seems even they have limits to which they can ignore general opinion. This is encouraging as it means we now know we can force their hand on other issues as well, should the need arise.

It also has a bearing on the appointment of Kinnear’s replacement. Big Joe was never the popular choice when he was hired. He certainly gained a lot of admirers in his first few months in charge, but once his honeymoon period was over it didn’t take long for this good work to be forgotten. This time around, the board – who are not particularly popular amongst the fans themselves – will need to make a popular choice in order to get the public back on their side. There are rich pickings of skilled, out-of-work managers around at the moment (if they can be persuaded to swim toward a sinking ship) and there will always be the list of usual suspects knocking about.

This is the end of yet another sorry chapter in the history of Nottingham Forest and I will be glad to close it. Hopefully Joe Kinnear will have the good sense to keep his mouth shut regarding Forest in the future, although I wouldn’t be too surprised to see us all insulted once again in some half-witted autobiography. However, we can draw some positives from this episode: the fans have proved that they are not fickle and will back a manager as much as they can, but when enough is enough then they are prepared to take direct action in order to make sure their views are listened too. We also now know that the club is not able to ignore these measures and that the fans do, after all, have a part to play in Forest’s future.

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