Fawaz al-Hasawi, the increasingly beleaguered owner of Nottingham Forest, has been asking potential buyers of the club for an annual salary that could rise above £1m and a series of financial demands that include an extraordinary clause entitling him to whatever the players earn in bonuses.

Hasawi has also had to stave off a threatened revolt from the club’s players, the Guardian can reveal, because of the frequency with which they have been paid late or not received their bonuses.

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However, it is his financial conditions for selling the two-time European Cup winners, while insisting he remains as chairman with a 20% stake, that highlights Hasawi’s determination to negotiate a remarkable deal for himself only a few days after the Kuwaiti issued a public apology for the erratic way he had run the club and admitted whoever replaced him would be “more professional”.

Hasawi has been asking for £50m to sell 80% of the club as well as being allowed to stay at the City Ground with a condition written into the deal that he no longer makes any financial contributions but takes 20% of future profits. Hasawi, in other words, has been trying to strike a deal whereby he would not contribute to helping the club tick over financially but stands to make millions of pounds if the new regime can halt Forest’s decline and re-establish them in the Premier League.

Forest are 16th in the Championship after four years under Hasawi’s ownership in which the average attendance has plummeted, the league position has steadily got worse every season and the club have had to deal with a series of winding-up orders in the high court, a transfer embargo for breaching financial fair-play regulations and starting the season with a reduced capacity because the ground did not have a safety-certificate holder.

Under the proposed terms, Hasawi’s salary would start at £480,000 a year but go up to £1.08m if Forest were ever promoted – the equivalent of around £21,000 a week at a club where the average player salary is currently £12,000 – and all the money he has put in would be paid back in three lump sums. On top of that, he would receive a promotion bonus of £480,000 and if Forest stayed in the top division the following season he would bank another one-off payment amounting to a year’s salary – meaning he would get £2.16m in one season, even discounting the players’ bonuses and any share of profits.

Prospective buyers have also been informed that he would like the total sum of what the players earn in bonuses, a revelation that is unlikely to go down well in the dressing-room at a time when Hasawi’s erratic leadership is already being questioned within his own club.

Forest’s players are becoming so frustrated by the frequency they have not been paid on time that when it happened again during the last international break some of the more aggrieved members of the first-team squad demanded a top-level meeting to air their grievances. Those players also discussed between themselves whether they would be within their rights not to train as a protest. They opted against taking such drastic action, deciding it would be better to maintain their professionalism, but it was not the first time it had been mooted and that indicates the strength of feeling inside the club.

Hasawi is currently negotiating with an American consortium led by John Jay Moores, the former owner of the Major League Baseball franchise San Diego Padres. Moores, 72, has previously tried to initiate deals with Everton and Swansea City but talks with Forest are at an advanced stage and the relevant people have been regular visitors to the City Ground in recent weeks. What is not clear is whether Moores has accepted Hasawi’s demands or if the current owner has had to modify his expectations at a cost to himself. Yet it is understood the conditions attached to the takeover put off a group of Canadian investors earlier in the year. Red Bull also had serious aspirations of buying out Hasawi but did not like the idea of an 80-20 split. Forest have also attracted interest from China.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Philippe Montanier is the seventh permanent manager in the Hasawi era but already is under threat. Photograph: Dan Istitene/Getty Images

With this uncertainty as the backdrop, there are also concerns within the club that the notoriously trigger-happy Hasawi is contemplating removing the latest manager, Philippe Montanier, or that the new owners might want to bring in their own man. Montanier is the seventh permanent manager in the Hasawi era but his position has been weakened only three months into the job and his close ally, the director of football, Pedro Pereira, resigned this month. Pereira, previously the chief executive at Sporting Braga, is well regarded within the industry and his appointment was regarded as a coup when he arrived in June under the recommendation of Evangelos Marinakis, the Greek shipping magnate and Olympiakos owner who was planning his own takeover.

Pereira first started considering his future towards the end of August in the aftermath of Oliver Burke’s £13m transfer to RB Leipzig, a deal Hasawi undertook against Montanier’s wishes.

Forest received that payment in one sum and Hasawi promised it would be reinvested in the club before confirming last week he was close to confirming a takeover. “I tried my best,” he said. “It didn’t happen. I wish and I hope that it happens with whoever wants to buy the club. I’m sorry [for] the fans. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right. When it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen and you shouldn’t continue. Maybe the new people will do it better than me. I am sure they are more professional and I wish them all the best. All of them are professional.”

Hasawi initially did not comment and the Guardian was told, by his solicitors, that the figures are not disputed. However, the 47-year-old later released a statement via the club’s website. “I am aware of reports recently published in the Guardian newspaper regarding investment in the club. I can confirm that the information published was inaccurate and my solicitors have confirmed that there has been no communication between them and the newspaper. The terms of any potential investment deal are, and will remain, confidential and the club will not be making any comment in relation to this issue. The matter has now been passed to my legal team, as such it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”