Doomed for the scrapheap
11/04/05 | by Daniel Hawkins

About seven years ago my father purchased a luxury limousine from a rather dodgy outfit. Okay, it was not perfect, but with a little TLC this limousine had the potential to be the king of limos. It was almost perfect in every way. The engine was so good you could run it for years and the bodywork was pretty decent too. Anyway, after a couple of years this car was almost pristine – you could eat your dinner off the engine, it was so clean. My father had employed a perfect driver to chauffer people around in and was earning a good wage; you could say this was almost the Premier of limousines.

After a time though, my dad started to lose interest and rather than keeping the car in its immaculate condition, he decided it was more advantageous to sell the best bits and replace them with second hand parts that were nowhere near as good and still fleece money out of the passengers at the same time. Out went the engine to a chap in Newcastle who paid a handsome sum; in came a worn-out lump from a Vauxhall in Scotland. He then went on to sell a perfect interior to some chap in Southampton and replaced it with a rather dowdy effort from an Austin Maxi in Northern Ireland. Over the years more parts went and were replaced with rubbish.

People used to pay a decent fee to ride in this car, but my father insisted on charging more nowadays on the promise that this famous car will be great once again. Today the car is dumped down the bottom of the garden and is ready to be stripped of all its goodness and scrapped. All that is left is the bare shell, which has the odd remaining decent part, but is basically only fit for the junk yard.

Sadly for the fans of Nottingham Forest, this story will be only to familiar. It reflects the exact situation we find ourselves in. Our chairman, Nigel Doughty, has all but killed the club. He promised us the world and delivered nothing. Instead of taking the club up, he turned it from an average, recently-relegated club with the potential for promotion, with a successful academy revered around the country, and turned it into a laughing stock. Now, stripped of all its assets, players not coming through the academy and on the verge of the third tier for the Football League for the first time in 54 years, the club is doomed for the scrapheap – all because our chairman has got fed up with his little toy.

We could say we was warned by some of my colleagues that have predicted this in the past. Sadly I cannot believe how spectacularly right they were. I was a strong believer in replacing Paul Hart after that near fateful season, now I can only see that the chairman should have been replaced rather than the manager. 

I couldn’t care a monkeys if he keeps telling us we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. Had we not employed his chosen manager in David Platt in the first place and got loaned up to the hilt to buy poor players, I am certain we would be enjoying games against Southampton rather than Southend. I think the worst thing the club has ever done is accept Mr Doughty’s proposals and promises.

Only time will tell if we can improve. We are in this situation no matter what, but I know one thing: it may not be long until fans are protesting and trying to remove the chairman. I would, however, like to see the likes of Gary Birtles and John McGovern come from the comforts of the media and maybe try and organise some sort of consortium to take over the club. They keep saying how much they love this club, so let's see some action in those words boys. Take some advice from Tony Cottee, or are you just not brave enough?