Eight days after Forest fans realised they were getting nothing to improve their hopes for the new season, the club finally issued a response to the criticism they have, rightfully in my opinion, received. But rather than Mark Arthur apologising for his public naming of targets and making the club’s Acquisitions Panel look like the amateurs that they are, he prefers to treat the fans with contempt and an air of arrogance that suggests he thinks we will keep on paying up and walking through the gates regardless of what they do.

I don’t try to hide my contempt for Arthur or Doughty, my view is very one sided, I admit that. For the most part of the early years I gave Doughty the benefit of the doubt and took comfort in the fact that he was a fan and making mistakes was part of the process. However, after years of failure and the financial position only getting worse under his leadership, my faith in him rapidly burnt out. Last season was the only year I felt we’d finally made some strides forward as we’d got a manager with a track record of getting clubs into the top 6 and he duly did so for Forest. But soon enough, true to form, Doughty failed to back his manager at the right time and get us over the final hurdle into the Premier league.

Instead of making up for that failing, the summer actually saw the squad weakened in terms of quantity at least. Arthur had upset Swansea and Cardiff by publicly pursuing their players, claiming “they want to come to us”. However, he quickly inserted his get-out clause by saying we would wait until next year if necessary… how convenient. Then he wonders why the club are accused of trying to do things on the cheap.

As he stated in the very carefully questioned video, the AP worked last year when we signed 9 players. Yes indeed it did. But the majority of those players were available for sale at reasonable prices. Blackstock and Camp had fallen out with QPR – easy deals. Gunter loved his time at Forest and wasn’t getting a look in for Spurs – easy deal. Adebola was free after we had failed to offer enough cash for him in the previous January – easy deal. McKenna knew this was his last chance of a big wage deal and although I can’t prove it, I have no doubt that he would have said to the PNE manager that he was in fact interested in moving on for a new challenge – relatively easy deal. McGoldrick, a Nottingham boy we had chased for a number of seasons, was at Southampton a club just relegated and in dire need of cash – easy deal. I think you get the picture. It seems buying things that others want rid of is an easy task. Buying things that people would really like to keep, despite fairly shady tactics, seems a bridge to far for the club and its infamous AP.

I’m not entirely sure why the club has taken 8 days to come up with an interview that most fans could have guessed at and probably pre-emptively written themselves. I find no warmth or redeeming features within Mark Arthur. He comes across as a cold politician type. Giving little away whilst trying to claim he’s been too honest in the local media over the summer. If you were honest, Mark, you would have said you just weren’t good enough to get a deal done for Pratley or Whittingham. You’d have been honest and used the usual “not willing to pay above the odds” line. Your response to fans has actually told us very very little about what specifically went wrong and why you ultimately failed to strengthen, or even maintain, last season’s squad.

As if I wasn’t annoyed enough by the clubs apparent lack of ambition and the continuing failure to explain why Doughty claimed “we will make the 2-3 quality signings we need by the end of August”. Mark Arthur seemingly decided that the fans probably aren’t annoyed enough; he perhaps thought he should probably try and threaten them a little. A thinly veiled remark that if Doughty continues to receive abuse then he would have to consider his financial backing of the club. I’m sorry Mark, but where has his financial backing got us exactly? £50+ million in debt to him and no better on the field than we were when he arrived, not to mention the 3 years spent at a considerably lower level.

Somebody kindly provided me some details of the clubs position when Eric Barnes managed to persuade Doughty to come on board. The club had £700k in the bank when Harry Bassett left and on top of that we sold Stone, Van Hooijdonk and Armstrong. Further to that were £3m worth of Parachute payments. I’d say that was pretty healthy despite the unpopularity of Wray, Scholar, Markham and co. Ten years down the line we are no longer even a yo-yo club and are apparently more than £50million in debt to a venture capitalist. Now, I’m no financial whizz but I’d say somewhere along the lines something has gone very very wrong. I can’t say Doughty isn’t committed to the club if he is putting £5m in a year but I have to question why, after 10 years he hasn’t managed to make the club self sufficient. There are many clubs in the same division who aren’t being LOANED £5m a year to not even break even. At best I’d say somebody is making mistakes in getting this club back on its feet. At worst they have a completely different agenda to the fans or what they publicly claim to be aiming for. I, however, am not brave, or stupid, enough to start accusing the club of things I have absolutely no tangible evidence of.

Threaten away though Mr Arthur because I will be supporting this club long after you are gone. Whether the club will get my financial support next season I will also have to reconsider next summer! Let’s face it, if Doughty left and called in his loans without a buyer then we would be in admin. But at least in admin we would know why the manager isn’t being backed.

I know my views aren’t shared by all, I know plenty of people still think Doughty is the only reason we are still around. I will never buy into that theory but there is only one way to find out! If my information is wrong then as always I welcome comments, facts and opinions alike. I will never fall out with other Forest fans for having different opinions. Ultimately we all want success for the club. However, I firmly believe that the best way of achieving that is to get in a new owner and new CEO who understand football and can do a damn sight better job on whatever budget they have. I don’t know anything more about an alleged takeover than the next man but I did note that Arthur didn’t categorically deny Doughty is selling the club, just he hadn’t discussed it with him. Maybe I’m reading way too much into that, purely through hope!

This response from the club, in my opinion, clearly demonstrates all that is wrong with Nottingham Forest and the lack of respect and empathy it has for fans. The PR from the club is shambolic and the community club feel of Forest has all but gone. For me, it’s them against us. Board against fans. As I said, I will still be here when they’ve gone, I take comfort in that fact.

Thanks for reading. And no, you can’t have the 5 minutes of your life back!