Thanks to @marcuslondon (Marcus Longdon)

NEW YORK — There were protests on two continents Saturday, almost all of them political in nature in the U.S. and abroad. But the one in Nottingham, England, outside City Ground, the stadium where the Nottingham Forest Football Club plays its home games, is more germane to this column.

Many Forest fans were outraged that a deal to sell the club to John Moores fell through, not only once since Jan. 13, but twice. Well, Moores, a software developer who grew up in Houston, Texas, and owned Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres, feels your pain. He’s listening. And at some point, he might jump back into the bidding if the club is made available by current owner Fawaz Al Hasawi.

I don’t know Al Hasawi at all. I only know he’s a figure of derision from the literally thousands of tweets, retweets and direct messages I have received the past few weeks from Forest fans. But I’ve known Moores for more than 20 years. And though he had his own problems with disaffected Padres fans at the end of his owneship tenure as he had to extricate himself from the baseball team for personal reasons, he’s much more than just an owner I’ve covered. He’s a trusted friend.

When he says, “We will remain interested in following Forest’s performance with a view to re-engaging with ownership about acquiring the Club in the future,” you should take him at his word.

Moores reiterated that position to me again after the protest on Saturday.

But as Al Hasawi has made it abundantly clear in his recent statements, it’s just not going to happen right now. So keep calm.

“The offer was for 100% of the club and had very few contingencies,” Moores told me on Saturday. “We found the record keeping to be rather modest, at best, and we had to do a lot of painful work to understand their financial situation. We had every reason to believe that our offer matched exactly what the seller wanted. So something odd happened — and it is not obvious what that was. Perhaps time will tell.”

The protest prior to NFFC’s 1–0 victory over Bristol City was well-behaved and was pegged at more than 1,000 by the Nottingham Post, although @mac123_m (Sutton@NFFC) eyeballed it for me at about 3,000.

To be sure, there are NFFC fans who back Al Hasawi, and he took to twitter Saturday after the club’s first win since Dec. 2 at Newcastle to thank, “fans who gave their support to the team this afternoon.” NFFC is currently in 19th place in Championship and needs to remain there to avoid relegation to a lower level. The bottom three teams will be relegated for next season.

Let me sort out a few things. This is not a consortium that’s trying to purchase the team. This is Moores, his family and friends, including Charlie Noell, his long-time financial advisor who has spearheaded the move from American sports into English Professional Football.

The other two deals for English football teams that Moores tried to buy have nothing to do with what happened with NFFC. Moores also tried to purchase three teams in the National Basketball Association over time and none of them came to fruition, either, for vastly different reasons. Each of these deals had a life of their own and no relation.

As far as Moores interaction with Al Hasawi, let me tell you this story: As you know, Moores flew from the U.S. to London on Jan. 10 and said he was expecting the sale of the team for $61.87 million U.S. to close that day. By the end of the week with all the negotiations concluded, he was simply waiting to sign papers. There was never a devaluation in the sale price at the last minute as leaked to the Nottingham media.

On Jan. 13, news began to emerge that Al Hasawi had pulled the plug on the original deal. I contacted Moores and he said he knew nothing of the sort. With huge help from @debleemith (Debs x), she sent me a copy of the Fawaz’s statement, which had already hit the newspaper. I forwarded it to John.

His reaction was, “Wow.”

Obviously, Fawaz went public with his position before he told Moores, which is not how you do business.

Despite that, Moores acted in good faith and tried to resurrect the deal, but to no avail.

Certainly, he chose to lend money to Al Hasawi as a stop gap for operational expenses, and my understanding is that he has been paid back. Yes, he already had a structure and people in place to hit the ground running in attempt to quickly fix a franchise that’s not financially stable. No, he wasn’t buying up property around City Ground.

One can choose to believe the rumors that are circulated and trust the wrong people. That’s an individual choice. But make no mistake, Moores is paying very close attention and is an owner worth waiting for.