Following our defeat by Scunthorpe this week,the reaction of fans on various forums and suchlike has been fascinating to see where people apportion blame for this result. Some of it has been downright bizarre.
Many people pointed fingers at who was responsible for the defeat, but what was somewhat alarming was the lack of pointing fingers at Billy Davies. How has the man who picks the team seemingly absolved himself of blame for the defeat. A clever game of politics, but we will come to that.
In many places the usual scapegoat came to the fore. Nigel Doughty. Yes people blamed the chairman for a solitary defeat. Vital as always led the way on this. They should rebrand themselves anti-Doughty.com. The single thing that came out was that they believed the lack of investment was to blame. This why we lose one game. Lets gloss over the 6 wins, and a creditable away draw at QPR, yes, lets forget that,for the simple fact we like to absolve Billy Davies from blame.
I mentioned it was a clear game of politics by Billy Davies, and it is. At the weekend he made the comment guaranteeing promotion if he gets his 3 loan targets. Of course said targets were not revealed. Additionally, this immediate suggests that these player of a calibre that all but secures promotion. Billy has been clever here, now if we don't go up, and we haven't got 3 loans in, he will point to having said I would have succeeded with the right tools. The board, IF the 3 players don't come and we don't go up, will suggest hang on, we got to second with the original set of players. Surely they are good enough.
We have seen this before, last season when Davies suggested that if we had Shorey we would have gone up. Cleverly distracting this deal was never going to be possible. Billy surely knows this, the board knows, but seemingly most fans don't. There are a raft of fans who believe anything Davies says.
Don't get me wrong,I appreciate what a good manager Davies is,and what an excellent job he has done. That much is obvious. But what also bothers me is his complete and utter inability to accept he got anything wrong, and that he pushes blame to everywhere but himself. Maybe that's the life of a football manager, but compare that to Calderwood who was the other extreme and refused to blame everyone bar himself,and its been a huge diametric swing to the other direction. Again, this isn't a complaint,more an observation really that Davies shifts blame to a board he says don't back him.
We covered before that Davies has everywhere else left under a cloud surrounding perceived lack of investment. Managers are aware of their budget, he knows what he was coming into. But by publicly stating he wants x amount of players and how if we get them everything will change. It's is very clever, many many fans completely buy into this. There is a cult of people who believe that Davies should be given free reign over the team to do as he pleases. It's an argument I can understand, but it simply isn't going to happen, so it's useless to suggest it. No manager gets this independence to do as he please. However loads of fans believe Davies should get who he wants no matter the price. One of our targets is supposedly Michael Brown,he earns £30k a week and if we loan him Portsmouth want us to pay all his wages. Do we really want to saddle ourselves with that fee?
I say the cult of Billy, because it's this belief that he can do no wrong, and hence why I bring up the Scunthorpe defeat. Not one of them say he may have picked the wrong team or tactics. No, that can;t be it. It has to be we didn't get Messi, Ronaldo and Fabregas in during the transfer window.
The Acquisition Panel haven't had their name muttered since Pleat revealed it's essentially been disbanded, so now it all falls back to Doughty. As we pointed out earlier in the week, Doughty is not a bad chairman, he has never seen the club nearly go out of business like so many. And do we really want to mortgage the future of the club to get potentially one season of Premier League. And then plummet back, and how often when clubs come back down do clubs just implode financially, trying to over Premier costs.This is an age of austerity, and we are right to be cautious. Nottingham Forest is for life, not just one just one season in the Premier League.
*Additional Caveat*
No sooner do I publish this then Davies is out quoting again about how we should have signed "stellar" signings in the summer and how we are paying for it. Again shifting and apportioning blame to others for failing to back him up. He is probably right, but theres no need to keep going on about to it to garner support from mindless drones who don't see a bigger picture of financial restraints and the fact maybe just maybe clubs didn't want to sell
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