A Call For Calm

Things have been getting a bit heated and silly this last couple of days. People making all kinds of self imposed ultimatums that we must do this and that or McLeish needs to go. You don’t get to make that decision. And to be honest that isn’t going to happen. Barring complete collapse he’ll be here till at least the end of the season and as much as many (me included) weren’t happy with his appointment, we need to move beyond it, because a poisonous angry atmosphere helps no-one.


Now I know how people will react. There will be two camps. Those who applaud the sentiment and those who don’t care and to be honest I’m not out to specifically change people’s minds, but just appeal to reason.

Yes the Cup defeat was shockingly poor. Oldham aren’t exactly on form, aren’t exactly setting the world alight. And only really needed to turn up for less than 10 minutes to completely blow us away. It hurts, but really? What cup success could we expect? A cup run is nice, but this now stops any fixture congestion which can hamper promotion campaigns.

And that looks a beautiful notion right now, a promotion campaign; many are suggesting right now that we are more likely to be embroiled in a relegation dog fight. This is a good old knee jerk reaction you see on twitter and Facebook.

A great many people I saw suggest they liked this appointment are now completely flip flapping. Some of them even went as far as when O’Driscoll was sacked to support it. Yes they somewhat have egg on their faces, but we have only played a few games under McLeish.

For some to be saying if we fail to beat Peterborough and Derby then he HAS to go. That isn’t going to happen. And neither do we want to be a club who brandish the axe so readily. It hardly invites a decent calibre of applicant for next time if we are seen to be completely impatient with managers. Furthermore McLeish was clearly the man they always wanted and once he was ready, O’Driscoll was the fall guy. It was just timed badly. When it was said they approached the layers about who they wanted, it was clearly a move to bring in an intermediary, an Interim boss till someone they felt more suited for the al-Hasawi tastes wanted the job.

Don’t get me wrong, this has all left a sour taste in my mouth and I do feel sorry for Sean. His reputation has if anything potentially been enhanced this whole sorry episode to the point he turned down the Barnsley job yesterday. He was also strongly linked with Wolves too. And it’s on this note I address my next point.

Wolves appointment of Dean Saunders speaks volumes to me about certain ex Forest boss. Billy Davies. Now for me maybe Wolves would have been a perfect fit for Billy, so why not even mentioned or linked? It seems to me his name has been poisoned and muddied by his boardroom shenanigans and wars with owners. For this point it seems no one wants to take that risk on him. So when people keep going on about Bringing Billy Back, this to me speaks louder than words. If he is so wonderful... Why has no-one else taken him on?

A lot of people have also been sending, if not abusive, then questionable Tweets towards Fawaz al-Hasawi, I feel if things don’t improve this will in increase in number and volatility. It really isn’t going to help the cause and I get people are frustrate d and angry, but you really think this will create a strong bond? Remember, we were in such parlous financial health we could well having done a Portsmouth if it hadn’t been for them. And people are getting angry? It’s ridiculous. I saw one guy tweet at Fawaz son, that he had a feeling the family were going to destroy Forest and do more harm than good. Really what good is it to be texting the son of our owner something like that? Where in anyone’s psyche does that seem a good idea? Because I’ve seen it before with people tweeting Michael Doughty about his father, and we all know what that brought about.

I think it’s a problem of the age we live in whereby the people who make decisions are available in ways we never saw before, and people seem to think they these people are instantly answerable to them. They aren’t of course. We are merely customers of a particular brand in a market at the end of the day, and although the average football fan, me included, feels more than that, in a truly economic sense that’s all we are. Do I feel Amazon, or Fosters directors should be answerable to me on social media because I don’t like their decisions? It is over simplifying matters but it is the basic crux of it.

I didn’t agree with the appointment of McLeish but neither do I agree with the acidic hate campaign being led against his regime already. As many other shave pointed out Davies wasn’t’ a popular choice amongst fans at the time, so in essence we need to give anyone a chance. I worry when people seemingly want their club to fail just because they don’t like someone involved. I sit near a fairly volatile character in the Trent End who I have mentioned before; I genuinely question why he goes to games as he seems to garner no enjoyment from the experience even when we play well. Something like this atmosphere is festered by these characters. Those who think because they shout loudest their opinion is worth more. He reacts angrily when some other people who sit adjacent to me tell him to stop moaning and support the team, complaining I pay my wages to come here. No-one forces you though. We need to escape this negative mindset that for some reason we can spout what we want, when we want, how we want and to whom we want. Yes you can, but is it right? No. And that’s my point. It’s only going to exacerbate problems.

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