As the reports began to drip of Nottingham Forest’s four-point deduction for breaking the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules, one tweet described the immediate reaction within the club’s hierarchy as “furious”, which rather fits the bill.
Whether it be refereeing decisions, VAR calls or their treatment by an independent commission, righteous anger has become the natural state for some at the City Ground.
Forest may well appeal – why would they not if the worst-case scenario is a rejection that leaves them exactly where they are now? Having had their mitigation reasons rejected by the commission, lawyer Nick de Marco will have his work cut out to reduce the punishment. De Marco is currently at “sign him up, sign him up” status amongst some fans. Room for another statue?
That fury, if aptly described, does not seem to be mirrored by those desperate Nottingham souls whose moods shift according to City Ground soap opera. There had been fear, verging on uncomfortable acceptance born out of emotional self-preservation, that it would be a six-point deduction creating an unpleasant gap to safety. Most supporters will accept a loss of four points. Their club agreed to abide by rules, even if they now feel that they are unfair, and failed to do so.
Forest are in the bottom three; nobody here is happy about that. But they are also not cut adrift, only a point behind Luton Town. Forest play Crystal Palace and Fulham at home in their next two league games; Luton are at Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. Everton may also suffer another deduction and Brentford are in freefall. There are handholds with which to haul themselves up.
Still, this must act as a multipurpose wake-up call to Forest. The rules may weigh against clubs who must step up in sporting class but with tighter financial restrictions due to the rolling three-year period including seasons in the EFL, but they cannot pretend that they have done everything logically.
44 signings is too many in five years, let alone 15 months between June 2022 and August 2023. That list includes five goalkeepers and three players who never played a league minute, either because their loan deal was ended early by the parent club or because they were loaned out straight to Olympiakos.
This advice is mostly financial, obviously. If budgets are tighter than you would like, every signing counts and that will become even more important if the Premier League follows Uefa’s lead on transfer-revenue ratio limits.
Nobody is suggesting outright parsimony, Sheffield United-style. They’re imploring for a middle ground of quality vs quantity that means any financial restrictions are seen as a limit, not a target. Every supporter should want sustainability. That is what ensures your club will still exist in 20 years.
This extends beyond the financial impact, though. For all Forest’s transfer activity, how much better has it really made them? Three points better off (before the deduction) than the team promoted last season from the Championship who spent £20m last summer and kept the core of their promotion squad.
Forest have high-value assets – Morgan Gibbs-White, Murillo, Taiwo Awoniyi (when fit) – but they were also forced to shift deadwood last summer because they had no space within the 25-man squad. This is not how a sensible club tends to operate.
The events of the last 20 months have left something slightly shapeless and hard to describe at the City Ground. Last year, the one with all the transfers, the survival bid was shaped around Steve Cooper, a force of personality and apparent decency who understood what this all meant because, supporters could see, he felt it too. Cooper is not here anymore.
Mull of Kintyre continues to belt out from all four corners before each half, a pre-match ritual that became anthemic during Cooper’s tenure and the realisation of the dream. But of late, locals have noticed a slight change in the atmosphere at home games. There’s nothing major, just a slight shift in tone and key and patience. Life in the Premier League’s slog zone can erode the spirit, however many times you promise that it never could.
That is what change can do: leave a mark as everything passes at double speed, a tiny vacuum where warming familiarity used to be. Cooper has gone now. Joe Worrall and Scott McKenna both left in January and, while neither may have started many games this season, they leave injured Awoniyi as the second longest-serving player in the first-team squad. Last year, everyone at Forest seemed to be on the same emotional page. No rallying cries needed.
That’s changed now because so much else has. Which, counterintuitively, might just be the great blessing of this points deduction. It’s not too many to deflate all belief, not too few for complacency to creep in between now and May.
If Forest feel fury, channel it. If they hate being in the bottom three, fight to escape it. If they feel like someone doesn’t want them here, do their damnedest to stick around.
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