42 years ago today Brian Clough walked into Nottingham Forest's City Ground for the very first time. Irish Daily Star Sports Editor BRIAN FLANAGAN has been a lifelong Forest fan and here he gives an account of the turmoil the club are currently enduring.

BEFORE Brian Clough arrived at the City Ground, Nottingham Forest were, as he so eloquently put it himself, "in the s**t."

13th in the old Division Two, Forest were getting crowds of below 8,000 and weren't even the best team in Nottingham. One of their own committee members even described them as the "most unprogressive club in the country."

They were known for very little apart from taking part in the first ever match to use goal nets and for once having a game abandoned because a player was bitten by a rat.


But the arrival of Clough, on this day 42 years ago, changed everything.

Between 1975 and 1980, Nottingham Forest went from that second-tier provincial side to champions of England and back-to-back European Cup winners.

They suddenly became a famous club. Players like Martin O’Neill, Trevor Francis, Peter Shilton and John Robertson were household names.

It was the stuff of miracles. Only Leicester City’s epic Premier League triumph last season can come anywhere close to matching it.

But now in the early days of 2017 the club finds itself very much back in the ‘brown stuff.’


They are 20th in the Championship, deep in trouble, and fighting it out with the likes of Burton Albion, Wigan Athletic and Rotherham to avoid relegation to League One.

On the surface that doesn’t sound a complete crisis with half the season still to come but behind the scenes Forest are a club drifting towards potential ruin.

If Clough’s arrival in 1975 was life-changing for Forest the appearance of Kuwaiti businessman Fawaz Al Hasawi as owner in 2012 has seen him emerge as a bigger pantomime villain on Trentside than even the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Al Hasawi’s reign at Forest has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.

Net debt stands at close to £100m. The club have fought off several winding-up orders and a second transfer embargo in a couple of seasons hangs over them this week.

Al Hasawi’s tenure has also been a series of bizarre decisions. He’s even taken to Twitter and engaged in some senseless exchanges with supporters, while players have at times allegedly threatened a revolt over being paid late and not receiving bonuses.


He sacked Sean O’Driscoll in 2012 just hours after a 4–2 win over Leeds when sitting 7th in the table and has had six managers since.

Al Hasawi has also infuriated supporters by selling prize assets like Oliver Burke to Red Bull Leipzig for £13m and Michail Antonio to West Ham for £7m, and not reinvesting the money, while the recent game with Preston saw the lowest home attendance for a league game in 12 years (15,864) at the City Ground.

Even in the past few days the club are rumoured to be on the brink of selling captain and fans favourite Henri Lansbury to Aston Villa for £3m while promising youngsters Matty Cash and 17-year-old Ben Brereton are also thought to be on the market to the highest bidder

But the Al Hasawi calamity doesn’t end there.

He announced during the summer, to the fans delight, that he was selling the club to a Greek consortium headed by shipping magnate and Olympiakos owner Evangelos Marinakis.


But the £50m sale fell through due to continued dithering from Al Hasawi which eventually put the Greeks off the scent.

The Guardian newspaper reported that he was believed to have asked for a series of extraordinary demands including a 20 per cent stake of future profits and an annual salary of £1m — a claim Al Hasawi subsequently said was "inaccurate."

His latest suitor is American millionaire John Jay Moores, the former owner of the San Diego Padres baseball franchise, and although he appears a more likely candidate than the Greeks, more hesitation and indecision from Al Hasawi has meant no deal is done yet.

The BBC yesterday reported that Moores is growing inpatient having been ready to finalise the sale on December 22 but Al Hasawi has yet to sign off on the deal.

In the meantime Forest are staring relegation in the face, particularly if the family silver is sold in an attempt by the Kuwaiti to recoup some of his investment before jumping ship.


Current manager Philippe Montanier has surprisingly survived the sack as it’s believed Al Hasawi doesn’t want to pay him compensation and until the Americans arrive, he’ll limp on with limited resources.

In truth, Forest’s problems stretch much further back than to the arrival of Al Hasawi.

The 1991 FA Cup Final defeat to Tottenham is thought by many Forest fans to have been a huge turning point in the history of the club and the first chapter in a long story of catastrophe.

Clough was never the same afterwards and disintegrated into a fog of alcohol addiction which eventually saw his final act being relegation in 1993 despite having Roy Keane and Stuart Pearce in his team.

The year 1999 was another shambles.

In debt to the tune of £20m, the club waved goodbye to the Premiership and hello to a succession of managers - four in all, the last being David Platt, who went on to spend every penny of the £12m initially invested by the then chairman Nigel Doughty on clumsy signings.

Doughty sadly died of a heart attack aged just 54 in 2012 having ploughed millions of his own cash into the club.


2005 saw them become the first winners of the European Cup ever to drop to third tier football and although they fought their way back into the Championship in 2008 the Promised Land of the Premier League remains out of reach for 18 years now despite a couple of Play-off semi-final appearances in 2010 and 2011 under Billy Davies’ stewardship.

Aside from the Cloughie era, Forest’s story is not particularly unique in the murky world of English soccer outside of the Premier League’s elite.

Clubs like Leeds United, Coventry, Portsmouth and Charlton have also suffered badly from bogus ownership while Swansea have shown in recent weeks that even life inside the Premier League bubble can be turbulent when the wrong people are in charge.

Forest’s plight now probably rests on whether, and how soon, the American consortium can get the deal over the line and Fawaz out of Nottingham.

But even that is no guarantee.

In an interview with MLB.com this week Moores said, “he doesn’t know anything about soccer.”

That 18 years out of the Premier League doesn’t look like ending anytime soon.


I wonder what Cloughie would make of it all?