OPINION: Nottingham Forest Football Club is losing its pride

It will come as little surprise to anyone of a Nottingham Forest persuasion that news has emerged this afternoon that suggest staff and players at the club have not been paid on time. Again!
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I love Nottingham Forest. Ever since I first walked up the steps from the concourse as a nine-year-old and proudly looked out at the surroundings of the City Ground, I have been hooked. Sadly, some twenty years later the football club is slowly losing its pride.

Forest will always remain my team of choice and I wouldn’t swap supporting the Reds for anyone else – that isn’t what supporting a team is all about - which makes the current ownership of the club all the more difficult to swallow.

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How difficult can it be to remember to pay your players on time? And, let’s not forget the staff at the club too. Media men, receptionists, event organisers, marketing boffins, commercial executives are all likely to have not been paid either and, with their wages considerably less than the £25k which Robert Tesche picks up per week, it is they who get the majority of my sympathy.

The football club is stepped in history; our chairman Fawaz Al Hasawi knows this. So why do we find ourselves having to comprehend these amateurish shenanigans each and every month. It is nothing short of pathetic.

Players who are out of contract in the summer will be looking at the club in its current state and firmly ruling out the possibility of putting the City Ground postcode into their Sat Nav.

And why should players want to sign for Forest? Would you work for a boss who would only remember to pay you every now and again? I certainly wouldn’t.

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The reason this time is apparently down to a national holiday in Kuwait.

Does Mr. Al Hasawi think that we all fell from the Christmas tree? Did the country of Kuwait, just suddenly decide to have a national holiday yesterday did they? Somehow I don’t believe that to be the case.

If anything a national holiday should mean that the players and staff would get paid early. That’s what my employers are kind enough to do, as I’m sure many other people’s are too.

I want to issue a heartfelt message to our chairman that is loud and clear. Sort your act out or sell it to someone who genuinely cares.

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I appreciate that your heart is in the right place, but the time has come for you to get some football people into the club to sort out important matters such as wages, bills etc.

The club is crying out for a proper chief executive and whilst I appreciate that if the chairman left, we would be plunged into serious debt, something simply has to give.

I am not saying for him to take his ball and go home, but if he really cares as much about Nottingham Forest as he says he does, then the time is now to start running our proud football club properly, if not then he needs to pass it on to someone else, who will.