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England: Nottingham Forest in deep decline [Wed Dec 31st, 1969]
Nottingham Forest's 25-year decline reached a humiliating new low on Saturday, when they became the first former European champions to be demoted to the third tier of their national league.
A 2-1 defeat at Queens Park Rangers condemned the 1979 and 1980 European Cup winners to relegation to the Football League second division, with an embarrassing nine wins from 45 games this season.
Forest sit alongside Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and AC Milan as one of the eight teams to have won the European Cup in successive years, but next season they will face demoralising trips to Colchester, Doncaster Rovers and Port Vale.
Their fans, raised on a diet of free-flowing football that was the basis of unprecedented success under their greatest manager Brian Clough, have watched the demise with a growing sense of resignation.
Clough died of stomach cancer aged 69 last September and his demise set the tone for a desperate season at the City Ground.
Significantly, Forest now find themselves at a lower ebb than when Clough first sauntered into Nottingham 30 years ago and saved them from relegation from the same division. They last played in division three in 1951.
The rot set in during the final season of Clough's 18-year reign, the 1992-93 campaign that ended in relegation from the Premier League.
Forest have had nine different men at the helm in the ensuing 12 years and in this season alone, there have been three different managers.
They started with Joe Kinnear, but he quit following a 3-0 defeat at local rivals Derby County.
Caretaker Mick Harford failed to reverse the downward drift, memorably describing the team's efforts after a 3-0 defeat by Cardiff in January as "atrocious, disgraceful and embarrassing".
The current boss, former West Bromwich Albion manager Gary Megson, stiffened resolve, but his inexperienced team proved unable to sustain their initial improvement during a bloody relegation dogfight.
He has described watching their recent displays as "excruciating" and former defender Larry Lloyd, one of the most combative members of Clough's European Cup-winning sides, agrees.
"I can't believe what I've been watching," he said last month.
"I know people get fed up with former players like me going on about the old days and I don't blame them. But what has the club come to when they are worried about what the likes of Gillingham are doing? That really galls me."
EMBARRASSING RESULTS
One of Lloyd's old team-mates, striker Garry Birtles, believes the players have let the club and Clough down.
"I think Cloughie would be absolutely distraught if he was still with us today," Birtles told the Daily Mirror newspaper after it reported claims that some Forest players misbehaved on a night out in Nottingham in the week before Saturday's game.
"He would be so saddened to see all he achieved going to waste. The foundations that he worked so hard to put in place with (his assistant) Peter Taylor have been flattened by the players. It is an absolute disgrace."
It is not entirely the players' fault. Their collective on-field weakness is the result of off-field debts caused by poor management, ill-advised transfer moves and over-ambitious stadium development.
Forest's 30,000-capacity City Ground was considered a venue worthy of hosting European Championship matches in 1996. With its irregular stands, however, it retains the air of a work in progress and the slump in revenue that will inevitably accompany the club into the third division means there is little prospect of a planned new main stand materialising in the short term.
Earlier this month Forest released their financial figures for 2003-04. Turnover amounted to only 10.6 million pounds (US$20.27 million), of which 8.4 million, a staggering 79 percent, came from player salaries, bonuses and signing-on fees.
A deficit of 7.5 million pounds was met with loans from chairman Nigel Doughty of 6.4 million pounds. They also owe 4.3 million to the council for the building of the new Trent End stand.
The current situation is a little healthier in financial terms, thanks mainly to the sales of highly-rated defender Michael Dawson and Ireland midfielder Andy Reid to Tottenham Hotspur for five million pounds this season.
That income will enhance future balance sheets but the price has been demotion and some embarrassing results for a club who ruled Europe 25 years ago and whose proud English record of 42 unbeaten league games was overhauled by Arsenal only last year.
A 6-0 defeat at Ipswich in March was followed by a 3-0 humiliation at home by Plymouth this month.
Forest will try to take heart from the experience of other sizeable English clubs like Aston Villa and Manchester City, who have re-established themselves in the top flight after spells in the 2nd division.
They would be foolish to assume, however, that the only way is up.
Reuters
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