Is Doughty Worried about County?

On a typical Saturday at Meadow Lane less than a quarter of the stadium is in use. Meagre gatherings of 4,000 gawp and grumble as former Forest bit-parts and football league journeymen stage laborious tussles.

With the smattering of stooped elderly men and planes of empty seats it has an unfortunate feel of non-league. And, until the arrival of Munto Finance, that’s where County were heading.

The latest Middle Eastern invasion was cordially dismissed to begin with. Sky Sports News stretched to an afternoon mention and the local press were happy to regurgitate the soundbites.

But a £50,000 bid for Jack Lester wasn’t quite enough to push Manchester City’s £25m surge for Adebayor off the back pages.

Then came Sven.

All of a sudden everybody in the country has a curious eye on Notts County. And Forest fans are raising a cautionary eyebrow too.

After all, the new men at Notts are talking about a club for the community, about foreign links, about a true Nottingham rivalry. And if they’re prepared to open their wallets for Sven, they might just be serious after all.

Let’s face it, Eriksson won’t be spending an awful lot of time inside the solemn red-bricked walls of Meadow Lane. But even for his fleeting assistance he is likely to be taking well over a million a year.

Why else would he bother?

Mexico forked out £2m to get rid of him, Thai maniac Shinawatra paid him £2.5m for a year in charge at Manchester City, his England salary was £4.5m and his compensation for leaving the job cost the FA another £4m lump sum.

Sven doesn’t do projects. He does money.

With Forest again outspending every single club in the Championship, and assembling a City-style arsenal of strikers, I suppose we have to wonder whether or not Nigel Doughty is a little flustered about the notion of a thriving Notts County.

His plans for a flat-packed 50,000 seat commercial bowl do not make room for a big-spending city rival skimming its share of the next generation.

Notts have a long way to go before they repeat the stratospheric rise of similarly-subsidised Hoffenheim in Germany. For starters, cranky old Charlie and co will probably have to be paid off before the ball really starts rolling. But this week’s statement of intent is food for thought, nonetheless.

Whether Doughty’s sudden urge to spend was inspired by Billy’s impassioned demands or indeed the arrival of money to Meadow Lane, we’ll never really know.

Either way, I'm not complaining.

Strange Times at NG2

Whatever happened to Nottingham Forest?

Don’t worry, read on, it’s not another inquest into the Great Decline of the 90s (or the Greater one of the 2000s, for that matter).

I’m talking about summer 2009 – the preseason that’s rewriting the rulebook, and probably preparing us for eternal disappointment hereafter.

It’s been the summer of action; of rumours with substance, of Evening Post promises that materialise, of deals being completed without the Ebay-style bidding policy of working from ‘derisory’ upwards.

The summer of gratification for the daydreaming legion whose cursors twitch around ‘Refresh’ from the moment a ‘source’ spots Neil Danns in Greggs.

It’s not very Forest, is it? But then neither was the armchair ending to the torturous season before us; months of nail-shearing ending in a dozy evening with Sky Sports.

And neither is the signing of players like Dele Adebola and Paul McKenna who are neither young nor born in Nottingham.

And am I right in recalling that the season ticket prices were published before June 30?

Something isn’t right.

I’m not sure I’m comfortable without being able to indulge in metaphors about doom and the apocalypse, and the forums don’t look right without threads like: “WHERE THE F**K ARE THE SIGNINGS FOREST YOU CUN...”

So what does it all mean? As a supporter group we are manically depressed and those who sobbed a bucket as Rob Jones signed for Scunthorpe are now predicting a Champions League spot.

The sensible conclusion has to be somewhere in the between.

We’ve made a string of solid signings, ranging from satisfactory to sensational, and the squad is taking shape.

Even stripped to its bare bones the squad looked meatier with Davies’ calculated ringing through it. Now it looks strong in its own right, and with another couple of additions it will be the strongest side we’ve had for a very long time.

We’ve added real men to the team. While Calderwood’s fancy was for the scrawny and etiolated, Davies has added meat to the bones with Adebola and McGoldrick – a burly centre-half will surely follow.

And we’ve taken a forward stride in targeting young talents who have already proven themselves at the right level.

But we have to be cautious. None of the players we’ve signed are world-beaters (at least not yet) and few have the Premiership strut that carries sides like Wolves into the big time. Those expecting a siege for the automatic places will probably be disappointed.

For the time being we have to be satisfied that we finally have a manager we can believe in - and a chairman who knows he has a manager to believe in.

This might not be our time, but all the signs are that our time is not too far away...


Final Thought: What on earth will compulsive-attendee Ebby do when Forest kick off two different games at 3pm tomorrow? His head may well explode.