Karanka and O'Neill....

Note- This was written before Forest vs Bristol City, so there are no opinions on the performance in that game.

I thought it was going to be different!

We finally had a decent manager, things were looking up, and then, yet again, we shoot ourselves in the foot and have a mid-season managerial change. I purposefully waited until after the Reading game to give my opinion, and that game opened up a few more worms. Beware guys, this will be a long read. I had wanted to complain about Spygate, and all the OTT reactions, but as a Forest fan, this is more pressing.

Aitor Karanka: My thoughts on his year in charge.

I remember the day well. January 8^th 2018. I was in the Southbank, still on a high from that win against Arsenal that I never talk about, and no doubt annoying poor Kathryn Lichaj with the whole #GetEricADog campaign, and in comes a news crew from ITV Central, asking would I say a few words about the previous days game. In the 20 minutes or so, between agreeing to do the interview, and it happening, a tweet came through confirming Karanka had been appointed as our new manager. I was briefly asked what I thought about the rumours, and I told ITV it was confirmed. For some reason this part didn’t make the broadcast…..

Football wise, early results were a little disappointing, barring the 2-0 away win over Wolves, but I was happy when the horrific 3-0 defeat at home to Preston seemed to kickstart him into action. The next day (also Deadline Day) was weird, and nobody seemed to know who was in the squad anymore. Muzzy Carayol and Matt Mills both had their contracts ripped up, and many new faces in the team. It was now Karanka’s squad, not the leftovers from Warburton.

I will give Karanka praise for giving Warburton’s players a chance to prove their worth, including some players such as Zach Clough and Apostolos Vellios, who had been frozen out. Alas it didn’t work, but it was worth a shot. But now, it was his own team, and I know a lot of fans disagree with this view, but I felt he basically had a four month free hit period. Performances were inconsistent, results didn’t really come, but there was some positive points, such as a convincing 5-2 win over QPR, a late comeback win out of nowhere against Ipswich, and despite being sad in a way, Chris Cohen had the opportunity to play one last time for Forest.

Summer rolled around, and a busy transfer window built excitement, especially with some of the signings being thanks to connections with “Super Agent” Jorge Mendes, as well as the return of successful loanees from the previous season such as Jack Colback and Tobias Figueiredo. A host of departures as well, anybody who had bought a copy of FIFA18 in July or August would have struggled to field a team of players still at the club.

So, after a successful pre-season, expectations were high, and after a slightly slow start with too many draws, by the end of October we seemed to have hit our stride. Lewis Grabban and Joe Lolley had hit form, Tendayi Darikwa looked a million miles away from the player who had initially struggled the previous season, and all seemed rosy. We were taking points off potential promotion rivals, such as the win at Middlesbrough, and were in the last 16 of the EFL Cup. But then came, what I feel was the turning point.

As I have often complained about, it is a LONG time since Forest had a decent cup run in any competition. This was an opportunity, and we blew it big time. All credit to Burton, they wanted it more, it showed and they deserved the win and the plaudits for their historic cup run, no matter the score against Man City. I think making so many changes, with quite a few players who probably weren’t match fit, was a terrible mistake and dented confidence at the club.

After the cup exit, it was important we kept things ticking over in the league, and we did. We were now firmly in the play-off hunt, before part two of the unravelling came against Preston. I think every Nottingham Forest fan on the planet will agree it was a terrible performance, and after another home defeat against QPR (annoyingly the first time they had ever won at CG), some fans started talking about the possibility of Karanka leaving. I thought it was a load of b*******, and the press were just trying to create some drama. After the shambolic collapse against Norwich, I started to believe something wasn’t right. I will usually blame players for such things, but I think Karanka had to shoulder some of the blame for taking off two goal Matty Cash for Gil Dias, when we were trying to protect a two goal lead, and if he was taking off Cash, Ben Osborn would have been a much better option to bring on. Yet at the same time, his substitution against Leeds on NYD helped turn the game back in our favour. I openly questioned the decision to bring Osborn on with us 1-2 down, but he injected a new energy into the team and took his goal well. I thought that was the end of it, and we could just all get on with the play-off push, but sadly not.

It has now been a week since Karanka left/was sacked, and at the time, I was not happy with the treatment by the press. The Nottingham Post, who I’ve often criticised for their treatment of Forest managers in the past, were particularly bad, with constant fluff speculation articles, almost as if they were trying to force him to go, we do not need to see videos of “Under-pressure manager arrives at Nigel Doughty Academy to take training” and other similar pieces. I’d have expected it from papers from the Sun and the Mail, but you’d hope a local paper would be a bit more respectful, and I thought they’d improved from the days when they seemed to be pandering to Fawaz’s every whim, and making it out that Henri Lansbury was man of the match in every game!

The Reading defeat did little to improve my opinion, the only thing I took from that shambolic performance was how we needed to appoint a new manager urgently, and that we were going nowhere with Simon Ireland as caretaker. No offence to him, but he looked like a rabbit in headlights on the touchline, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to go back to being a coach (in other matters, how come Gary Brazil didn’t take charge this time?).

Thankfully, the board didn’t hang around. While all the talk was about Jokanovic, I went to my lunch break on Monday lunchtime, to twitter notifications galore on Martin O’Neill in advance talks. This excited me no end, but also a little bit of worry. As is well known, I am also a Celtic supporter, and Martin is a legend at both clubs. I have wanted him to take the Forest job for a long time, more or less from when he returned to management after taking a sabbatical to care for his wife, but appointing a club legend now worries me. Back in 2014, when it was announced Psycho was coming home, I got swept up in the hype over this and genuinely thought we were going straight up, consolidating our place in the Premier League and the only chance of him leaving would be taking over the England job. How wrong I was. I still stand by my belief that Psycho should have had more time, but at least his reputation at the club remains intact. Nearly five years later, I’m a little more wary of appointing a club icon, especially when it is one of my all time favourite people in football, but of course Martin is getting 110% of my support.

I have a few other worries, mainly the fact that he hasn’t managed at this level since 1996. OK, he took Leicester up and established them as a mid-table Premier League club, but it is a long time since then and the Championship (or the First Division as it was called then) has changed a lot. It is now one of the most competitive leagues in the world, and I hope Martin has done his research (OK, maybe now as thoroughly as Bielsa) and ready for the battle.

But, I’ll end on a positive note. Martin O’Neill, Welcome back to Nottingham Forest. If you achieve even half of what you did as Celtic manager here, I will be very happy. I’ve wanted this to happen for so long, I can’t complain now. Please be the one who breaks the long line of short staying managers, and finally take us back to where we belong. You have my full support, and you’ll know better than anyone the passion the supporters have for this wonderful club.