It had been my intention to present this write-up as a full transcript of the discussion in order to
provide as impartial a view of events as possible. But sadly, with over an hour and
a half’s worth of recordings, and owing to the rather meandering nature of proceedings, this was simply impractical. Therefore, what follows is as balanced a summary of the points raised by supporters and the responses given as is possible. Various incidences of tautology and deviation have been cut out, but the most pertinent statements have been
included in full. For my own personal views on the events discussed here, please see the
Forest Banter forum.The first issue raised was certainly a pressing one, regarding the consequences of relegation to League One. John Pelling (speaking for the only lengthy period throughout the whole session) told us that, in financial terms, relegation meant a three to three-and-a-half million pound drop in turnover, down from £11 million last year, part of which was a projected 10% drop in gate money.
Nigel Doughty commented: “I guess we either make up the short-fall from player sales (although we haven’t got many players attractive to other clubs at the moment) or from myself … It [relegation] does have quite profound consequences, but it’s something we’re going to have to live with.”
Asked how long the club could survive in League One before it had to revert to a “Plan B”, Doughty said: “I don’t think it would be prudent to make any sort of long-term promises in football.” He also said the club’s transfer budget would remain the same as last season’s. Asked if this meant the club going into more debt, he replied: “Well, debt to me, if you classify that as debt. I certainly wouldn’t, but John [Pelling] would.”
Although they admitted to having made mistakes in the past, both Doughty and Arthur seemed to blame previous managers for the club’s decline. After revealing that Joe Kinnear had “struggled” to spend all of his transfer budget – despite his own comments suggesting otherwise – it was suggested that Kinnear was fearful of damaging his reputations with bad signings. Doughty said: “One the things I’ve noticed down the years is, as a fan you think being a manager is a bit like playing a computer game; you go out, press a button and you buy that player.
“The thing that has surprised me is how immensely conservative managers sometimes are. Obviously there are exceptions, like Harry Redknapp. But they are very conservative people in that sense. I think they don’t want to upset the balance of the squad or be viewed as making acquisitions that might be viewed negatively.”
I asked Nigel Doughty if he had ever failed to give a previous manager the backing required for them to carry out their job. He replied: “I’m aware of some of these arguments on the internet and quite frankly I’m perplexed by them. I’m unaware of any time we’ve refused a manager anything, you know … I’m unaware of any time we’ve refused a manager backing.”
He claimed that all of the players allowed to leave the club in the summer of 2003 (including Jim Brennan, Riccy Scimeca, Jack Lester and Darren Huckerby) were down to the decision of then-manager, Paul Hart. He then blamed Hart for not attracting replacement players: “It wasn’t any sort of reticence on behalf of the board or the backing that the manager had, it was just our inability as a club and the inability of the manager to identify the correct players. Or maybe the manager thought he had sufficient resources at that time.” Upon the suggestion that both Hart and Kinnear had criticised the level of backing they received since leaving, Doughty said: “I’ve certainly not seen any comments from Paul Hart or Joe Kinnear to that nature.”He also cited geography as one of the main reasons that players might not want to join the club, saying: “It’s not always easy to attract the right sort of player at the right sort of price for your football club. More and more players are choosing geography rather than the actual football clubs, because they’ve reached a certain point in their career and knew they’re not going to progress.” He later gave Danny Webber’s decision not to sign as an example: “If a player’s in Watford, he’s not going to want to come to Nottingham Forest.”
When asked if Doughty felt he had got the right manager now, he said: “I think with his track record, absolutely.”
However, Mark Arthur was forced to explain comments made by Gary Megson where he described the club as being “rotten to the core”, suggesting that the stress of post-match interviews was affecting him: “There was probably a lot of raw emotion there … I think its quite unfair that managers are put under the spotlight immediately after high-profile games, regardless of whether it’s a big club or any other club.” He added: “We’ve found Gary Megson a pleasure to work with, he’s a very hard working person.”
Arthur said that the club would not interfere with Gary Megson’s management of the club because the board understood that, because they are not “football people”, Megson would not tolerate their intrusion: “When you appoint a manager, particularly somebody of Gary Megson’s standard, then you allow that person to manage the football club in a football capacity. As the board members are not football people, we have to rely on Gary for football matters.” He also stated that, although similar systems may be right for other clubs, Forest would not be bringing in a director of football-type figure, because that might also be seen as interfering from outside the foootballing “fraternity”.
Nigel Doughty commented on the futures of the five players put on the transfer list last month: “They are contracted as Nottingham Forest players and will remain so until we or they find another club. It’s a decision for Gary, but obviously they’re not part of his long-term plans.”
Despite numerous reports suggesting otherwise, Doughty clearly stated twice: “Stuart Pearce has not applied for the job.” I asked why, if this were the case, Stuart Pearce would lie about having applied for the Forest job on at least two separate occasions. Doughty replied: “Well, let me turn it around: Why would he say he had?” Some supporters suggested Pearce’s claim had been motivated by wanting to improve his reputation. I then told Doughty that Stuart Pearce had told me he had applied for the Forest job after Paul Hart’s sacking in a private conversation where there was no suggestion of publicity until I discussed it with him afterwards. Doughty repeated: “Well, he hasn’t.” When someone asked, what if he had applied, Doughty said only: “It’s a hypothetical question really.”
Another contentious issue raised by a number of people was that of stewarding at the City Ground. Mark Arthur said that Eddie Curtis had been replaced as head of safety by Alan Becksford, although there is no confirmation of this on the club’s official website. Of the club’s much-maligned safety staff, Arthur said: “My directive [upon arrival at the club] was zero tolerance to bad behaviour and hooliganism. [In the 2003/04 season] we had a number of incidences of hooliganism around the ground, a lot of people ejected and arrested. As a result [of the policy], and thanks to our relationship with the police, the number of people arrested has diminished quite considerably.”
He added: “I make no apologies for making sure all fans behave in a reasonable manner. That policy will continue at this football club.” He also insisted that there were no double standards when it came to policing away fans and said that the club had restricted supporter allocations for West Ham, Cardiff, Leeds, Derby and Leicester fans because of “persistent standing”.Arthur said that extra security staff (in addition to stewards and police) were needed because some stewards are not able to deal with violent incidents. Both Arthur and Doughty refuted allegations that some security staff employed by the firm the club hires to protect the ground have criminal records for acts of violence and insisted this could never happen due to vetting procedures and new licensing laws.
It was revealed that, for clubs bringing less than 900 supporters next season, away fans would be moved away from the Lower Bridgford End to another part of the ground, but this could not be a permanent move because the club was restricted by a lot of external rules and regulations. Nigel Doughty commented: “We have to be very politically correct these days.”
A suggestion was made to Doughty, who is of course chairman and joint owner of Umbro, that the club was missing out on possible profits by not providing a high enough quality of merchandising. Mark Arthur answered, saying that Forest did indeed produce a range of “high quality” items of clothing a few years ago, but these “didn’t sell”. It was also claimed that Forest were one of the most successful clubs in the league (The Championship) in terms of selling merchandise.
Doughty was asked about the motives behind his plan to buy the remaining 15% of club shares he doesn’t already own. He said that 15% of shares represented 15% of future revenue before joking that there were complications about out the remaining shares because some of them are still owned by Julian Markham and Irving Scholar – last time he bought shares off them it ended up costing them £4 million in legal fees and he’d “hate for them to have to spend any more”.
Doughty was asked about his motives for taking control of the club and answered: “I’ve been a Forest fan for as long as I remember and I hope to be a Forest fan when I die." One supporter who had invested in shares when the club was floated on the stock market in 1997 asked for Doughty's view on this. He suggested that the shares were probably now a “worthless investment”, but then again, so was his.
Regarding the future of the City Ground, Doughty said that there were still plans to build a new Main Stand in the near future, although a scheme to create a ‘Chelsea Village’-style entertainment compound had been dropped due to complications with Nottingham City Council – whom he labelled “slow to the point of being pedantic” over the rescheduling of the Trent End bond repayments last year.
Other matters raised included the now infamous Tantragate scandal in which 12 players were caught on a drunken “rampage”, which Mark Arthur said was being dealt with internally by Gary Megson, and – not entirely unrelatedly – the club’s poor PR record, which Arthur said was “a very hot topic within the club itself and is something we are always wrestling with”. It was left unclear as to whether there would be future repeats of this forum, although a number of supporters in attendance expressed their gratitude towards the chairman for answering questions so frankly.
Speaking privately after the discussion, Nigel Doughty turned down the offer of a one-to-one interview with LTLF.