al-Rashidi Signs, But Some Aren't Happy

I would very much like to start this piece by reinforcing my support of the al-Hasawi regime. I am firmly behind what they are trying to do, and without them.... well that doesn’t bare thinking about.

And yet some of our supporters are just never happy. I am have repeatedly called for fans to have patience. Today for me seems to be s turning point in some regards. Perhaps for the worse.


Khalid al Rashidi has been granted his work permit and as such is signing for Forest. This is a keeper we know little about, but has international experience and spent time on trial in he summer with Reds. But the way some fans have reacted to the tweeted news was as if we were signing a 12 year kid who has never seen a ball never mind played in net.

I have just read a tweet that read “when can we sign some good real players, rather than loans and your Kuwaiti mates.” This last week would have been targeted at Fawaz of course who has announced he is scaling back from Twitter. 2 years ago we had a chairman on Twitter. He too was forced to scale back and remove himself from there. Which led to a reduction of financial support before Nigel Doughty’s untimely death.

Now we have a similar situation where after begging for more interaction and information from board level, when what we do get we don’t like, a minority, but a very vocal minority immediately feel the need to illustrate their feelings. Varying from just a moan, to directing their tweet at either the player or board member or relatives in relation to their gripe.

The news that Fawaz won’t be as active on Twitter is a great shame. It’s been pleasant hearing the news first hand of signings and his excitement. Now because for some fans what they hear isn’t good enough its forced him to come away. The problem is with this vocal minority is that they will see this a weakness and a lack of willingness to connect with them. Not the actual truth that's there little or no point connecting with people who are never happy with what you do.

This club may well not exist with Fawaz, and if it did it wouldn’t be in the position we are. But fans want the moon on a stick. We make a signing, they wanted one who was better. We sign a potential rough diamond, they wanted a polished diamond. The problem is, and I’m going to say it, these people are basically stupid. They don’t understand bigger pictures. They see things as black and white and incredibly simple. Why sign this player when we could have that player, without even thinking is it possible, would they come, what the wage situation is, would they fit in systems, would they upset morale.

A lot of people seem to question why trade in camp for an untried entity. Well Camp wasn’t going to sign a new deal, he wanted to be off. Get used to that. So for that reason he was jettisoned from the club. Simply put, McLeish seems to run the club along the lines of if you don’t want to be here, then get gone. And I support that mentality. I think for too long we have had players treating us another stop on their career and not somewhere to build and make something, for lack of a better cliché, beautiful.

Basically who are we to argue if they people bankrolling us want to bring some Kuwaiti players along for the ride. If it starts to hamper us then and only then can you really grumble. But this guy hasn’t even signed. Who the hell are you to question it? What do you know about al-Rashidi that makes you so certain he will fail? It’s like no-one has ever come from a league that hasn’t produced a star before. Look around, the game is global, this will happen that players come from places that were previously footballing back waters.

Fawaz powering in an effort at the Trent End

Back to the al-Hasawis, increasingly I see people openly question them. People bemoaning the number of loans and no permanent signings. Well again, that's the nature of the beat I’m afraid. We are in flux, attempting to try and build from essentially nothing. Futhermore in flux because we're trying to get promoted and don’t want to be saddlled with Championship players in the Premier League. Furthermore it’s a means to an end. These players we want and need might not be available for a permanent deal in January. Clubs don;t want to sell in January because it's harder to replace and often more expensive. There's an old adage that you can;t get value in the January window and often that is true. So to complain we have too many loans is short sighted and looking for any reason to moan.And thats all people seem to want to do

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