By Peter Ottaway
Billy Davies has come out and said he believe the club is on the slide again and will not be promoted.
This is in no uncertain terms a thinly veiled shot at the board. The fact the signings he wanted haven’t materialised means he isn’t happy, and there is no doubt he blames the board here.
I can’t help thinking however what exactly he is trying to achieve here. He is for certain trying to take the attention away from himself and turn supporter’s ire at the less than ideal start on to the senior reaches of the Forest management chain
Fans will turn if we don’t beat Millwall, and Billy is merely fostering this animosity from fans to the owner Nigel Doughty and Mark Arthur.
It appeals to the general ignorance most fans will have as to how clubs are run, who simply see the likes of Manchester City bankrolled by rich men. People know Doughty is rich and so question why it is he doesn’t invest in securing a promotion winning side.
Davies has already said he believes we would have gone up had we pulled our fingers out and signed Shorey. This gets fans attention. They see the manager saying the board failed to make the requisite signing to see the club promoted. Yet what they aren’t being told is that Shorey was never going to come here anyway. Shorey didn’t want to make the step down to Championship permanently, and true to form he got another more to a Premiership club. But fans don’t often get to hear the wider picture that Billy likes to paint.
So here we are again with Davies blaming the board. It seems that he is already getting his excuses in order. What isn’t going to help this club go forward is fragmented support that are hostile to the owner of the club. That will achieve nothing other than simply making Doughty walk away. This would leave the club in such a precarious position. It seems to me Davies has only the short term in his sights. He wants the instant results and doesn’t care of this legacy is ruin, a team without funding.
Billy Davies can complain about the Acquisition Panel all he wants, but the simple fact remains he knew it existed before he signed his contract to become manager. So why bleat about it now? It seems he simply wants the fan power on his side. All well and good, he surely hopes this will force the boards hand into making some kind of signings. But it also creates an ‘us v them’ mentality. It makes fans angry. It creates tension. It creates uncertainty. It hardly is going to make players want to sign when there questions about where the club is going exactly.
I think it would have been better if Davies had merely actually just got on with his job rather than spouting off to an old media source that sticks a microphone instead of him. After all, his title is manager, and not chairman, chief executive and king of planet earth rolled into one.
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