10 May 2017 12:38:21
I pay over £500 for my season ticket and that gets me a seat in the same place in the ground for every home game. It gets me discount in the club shop and it gets me into U23 fixtures for free. It does not make me a shareholder in the club. To become a shareholder in the club and to have a direct say in the running of the club I would have to shell out far in excess of the £530 odd quid I currently pay for admission.

I can have an opinion on how the club is run the same as everyone else, but the transfer activity, the hiring and firing of managers, the payment of player and the inland revenue, is quite frankly none of my business.

Football is an entertainment industry, (Somebody really should tell Tony Pullis and Mick McCarthy) If I do not like the entertainment on offer I do not go. I do not go to a theatre or a cinema, pay my entrance fee and expect to run the place.

Fawaz will leave with not one player owed wages, the taxman will be paid in full. The Main Stand will still be called the Peter Taylor Stand, the pitch side advertising will stay, as will the big televisions in the corners of the ground. Oh, I nearly forgot and we are still a Championship Club, currently on the same points as Derby County.

Fawaz hired managers based on the opinions of a gobby few (the second coming of Balmy Billy for example) He sacked good managers based on the unrest of the gobby few. O’Driscoll not sex enough, Pearce, a good player but a crap manager, and Freedman with no fit strikers available, not attacking enough. No logic, but very noisy seemed to do it.

I read on this very site the day after the Ipswich game that the jury is still out as far as Warburton is concerned. What jury is this then and what rights do they have? Opinions, opinions, opinions, we all have them and long may that continue, I will defend any persons right to voice their opinion with the last breath in my body. The sad truth is, a certain section of our fan-base have just hounded out the second owner in succession. That is not right. Both men and their families were exposed to levels of personal abuse that is not acceptable to fair-minded supporters.

One of the major criticisms rightly aimed at Fawaz was for the lack of structure in the club. A perfectly reasonable complaint from the fair-minded fans, but the gobby few, who often, because of boycotts or protests, do not support the club in any financial way, were up in arms too, citing the lack of a CEO as one of the reasons for their latest boycott. The same noisy few hounded out Nigel Doughty because he and his then CEO Mark Arthur refused to back Balmy Billy and were dancing with delight when Fawaz brought Billy back and ushered out Mark Arthur and the then Finance Director.

Fawaz made numerous mistakes and he has admitted as much, but his biggest mistake by far was making the majority of his decisions based on the opinions of a few hot heads on the social media sites, who he was never ultimately ever going to please.

We know that we are only talking about the odd few supporters because when they called for their Green Top protest under Nigel Doughty or the Main Stand Rally under Fawaz the response was in the hundreds and not thousands. They cannot understand how a lot of noise on the internet does not translate into mass protests. An empty drum makes a lot of noise.

Presumably the jury will be out on our new owner until we have the inevitable dip in form, then the process will all start again. The protester will call for the head of Mark Warburton, they will want stellar signings to address the playing staff issues, that they believe must be at the bottom of the clubs decline.

We have the players, they just require time and consistency of management, to start showing what they are capable of.

Mark Warburton seems to be another decent manager, but make no mistakes, over the summer he will bring in his own players and dispense with others brought in by previous managers. The new players will need time to settle and our consistency will suffer in the short term. The difference I hope for Warburton will be the new owners. How long can they hold their nerve? Consistency and stability are not sexy, but they are what Forest need more than anything else right now.

Stuart Pearce, always worth listening to when he speaks, advised us to look to Bournemouth as our blueprint for success: a realistic and achievable ambition with a united club with a united fan-base.

I personally want nothing to do with people who think it is right to abuse other human beings, so for me the only way for Forest to get a united fan-base, is for the gobby few to wind their necks in and stop trying to run the club from their bedroom computers. Come to the ground and shout for the team and I will stand by your side every day of the week.

Whoever the new owner is, he will not hold the key to our success going forward; we the supporters will. Fill the ground and support with a positive outlook and watch us fly. It may not happen overnight, but it will bring success eventually. The protests and boycotts will eventually kill the club if not stopped.

I was once part of a 49,000 crowd at Forest.

Build it and they will come.

Come on you reds.

1.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 12:59:05
Well said, Wishey. Good post.

2.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 13:25:11
Wisheyeddove

I was that poster that said the jury is still iut on Warburton.


You clearly have taken it out of context.


I knew it would be wrong to call him a brilliant manager, and the reincarnation of Clough as we stayed in the Championship by the skin by the skin of our teeth, Warburton has achieved nothing campared to Clough.


I also knew it would be wrong to say Warburton was useless, and should have done better with the talent available to him, and why has he picked this player over that player, and so forth.

Therefore the jury is still out.

You could however be wrong about Fawaz listening to a mouthy few, if a mouthy few told him to go and have a swim in the Trent, would he?

Fawaz probably had the same opinion as the mouthy few, so did as he did out of a firm belief he was right what he was doing, and he could always point to the mouthy few if anyone doubted him.

Off course you, yourself hold firm opinions about him, and you never held back about the way he runs the club.

Yes i said RUNS the club, as i have not yet see confirmation as to otherwise.

3.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 13:33:39
Regarding Mark Arthur there is an alternative view that he was clandestine, egotistical and self interested.

4.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 13:53:14
Great post whishey, lot of home truths there.
Never agreed with protests and most clubs whose fans do it end up the worst for it.
MW will know who to keep and who to get rid of and it won't be based just on skill, he'll know who's got right mental attitude and who he can rely on.
It's a thankless task owning a football club, because unless your successful your on a hiding to nothing.

5.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 14:27:05
Well said. Marthur was a rogue however.

6.) 10 May 2017
10 May 2017 17:02:17
We said Wishey. Fond memories of standing on the Bridgford End floodlight pylon to see over a full house of 49000!

Hopefully with a new owner with Champions League experience we will have someone who will look outwards at the Forest potential to build a bigger fan base not inwards at just consolidating what we have within a 31,000 seater stadium?