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John Jay Moores has spoken for the first time about his hopes for Nottingham Forest, as he looks to conclude a takeover of the Championship club – and says his first task will be to 'clean up' the behind the scenes structure at the City Ground.

Moores, the former owner of the San Diego Padres baseball franchise, says he and business partner Charles Noell have missed being involved in professional sport.

The duo are heading up an American consortium – who are expected to tie up a deal to secure a majority stake in the club this week.

Moores admits he has little in the way of expert knowledge when it comes to football – but that was also the case when he initially took over the Padres, before steering them to success in San Diego during his early years within Major League Baseball, when the Padres won National League West titles in 1996 and 1998 and were defeated by the Yankees in the 1998 World Series.

"He (Noell) likes the idea and in all candor, I miss sports, too," Moores told Barry Bloom of MLB.com. "It's kind of stretching the envelope for me. I don't know anything about soccer. Not that I knew anything about baseball at the time, either."

Moores' arrived at San Diego in the early 90s at a time when the franchise was at a low ebb, with the previous owners having allowed many of their star players to leave in 1993.

He put together a management structure of people who were baseball experts – and the end result was success. Moores says he now hopes the same blueprint can bring success at the City Ground, once the deal is concluded.

"You've got to go in and clean it up. It's not as hard as you might think. You just have to start watching everything," said Moores, who says he expects to be a low profile figure once he does become the majority owner of the Reds.

"Hands off, man, is the answer," said Moores when asked what kind of owner he would be.

"It's just too hard. Everything is too hard. It just might be the natural order of things for fans to dislike ownership. That may be just a normal state of affairs. Even the Red Sox, as successful as they've been, have gone through some grief. The Yankees, (principal owner] George Steinbrenner was notoriously despised until later in life when they started winning.

"If somebody does his job right, nobody should even know who's the owner, nobody should even care."

While Moores did not go into detail, he confirmed that work has already begun to recruit people to key roles at Nottingham Forest.

A chief executive, a head of finance, a director of football and possibly a chief scout are all likely to be among their list of appointments.

"We've interviewed a couple of people — three or four — and Charlie will have a lot more. We have some folks on the ground. They're ready to roll," he said.

Moores' purchase of San Diego came in 1994. By 1996, the Padres were in the play-offs for only the second time in their history and in 1998 went all the way to the World Series, also for only the second time in their history.

During his tenure the Padres moved to a new $450m new home in the East Village area of San Diego. They played there for the first time in 2004 and subsequently made it to the play-offs again the following year and also in 2006.

Having secured an 80% stake in the Padres for $80m, he sold the club for $800m in 2012, after MLB franchise values had boomed massively.

Moores confirmed that a similar deal is initially in place with Fawaz Al Hasawi, who will retain a 20% stake in Forest initially, although that could later change.

But the long term goal remains to repeat what he and his partners achieved in San Diego, by bringing success to the City Ground.

"The aspiration is get back to the EPL," Moores said. "We plan on doing what it takes to get there."