You’re living in the past, man

By: Tim | January 6th, 2009

As a Forest fan I’m all too accustomed to being told that the club is ‘stuck in the past’, or that we have delusions of grandeur. It’s an accusation that is frequently levelled at us, take this Championship blog for example. Joe Kinnear thought so too, shortly after joining us he made this remark: ‘Ever since I’ve been at this club I’ve had the history rammed down my throat, I see they don’t have any pictures of the relegation teams’.

The topic was very briefly discussed on yesterday’s Football Weekly podcast from the Guardian, where Barry Glendenning noted that some Forest fans were ‘disgruntled’ at the City result being described as a shock: ‘Obviously they’re still living in the past, when they were winning European Cups and getting to FA Cup Finals. You know, fair play to them’. I’m inclined to agree, I don’t think there is anything wrong with a bit of nostalgia, as long as it doesn’t cloud your judgement of the future.

For Forest the past is difficult to avoid anyway, with Clough being the national character that he was, but it is a grey area though, at what point do you stray in to delusions of grandeur? Personally I find that accusation frustrating, I was a twinkle in my father’s eye when Clough and Taylor were tearing up Europe, and I can only vaguely remember the resurgence in the late 80s / early 90s, consequently I’ve never used the ‘we’ve won two European Cups’ line to argue that Forest are lower than where they should be.

Maybe it’s a generation thing, then, but I think the reality of the club is that we are struggling in what is essentially Division 2, this is where Cloughie started with us in the first place – we’ve always been a provincial club really. Since Clough’s reign ended we’ve gone back to being a Division 1 / 2 yo-yo team. And yeah, we’ve always had a fairly healthy fan base, but in the early days of the Premiership we clearly didn’t have the financial nous to take advantage of the riches it could provide. Continually selling our best players to Tottenham doesn’t help either.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see us back up in the Premiership, but I don’t presume that we have an automatic right to be there because we won the European Cup almost thirty years ago. What Clough and Taylor achieved was remarkable even then, in today’s climate it will probably never happen again, not without luck and a serious wedge to back it up. There’s nothing wrong with remembering the halcyon days, just using it to argue that we shouldn’t be where we are is flawed in my opinion. Anyway, rant over.

We’ve got a third East Midlands derby to look forward to now, we’ve drawn the Rams in the 4th Round of the FA Cup. On paper this should be a cracker, what with Billy Davies returning to Pride Park and all. I’m hoping that our recent away form will continue for this match and beyond. In other news, Nathan Tyson has finally signed a new contract, taking him up to 2011. If he can keep those hamstrings in working order then this is definitely a bonus for us, his pace is an asset at any level. Billy Davies is taking some credit for this on the messageboards too, which is good to see. There are signs of life at the City Ground again.