Famous Last Words

Nottingham Forest Football Club, promotion contenders, a proud history, a big fan base and a stadium that holds ~30,000. Not to mention that we have won the European Cup twice - in case you hadn`t heard.

Neil Danns, a peripheral figure in Birmingham City`s squad who is only proven at league 1 level. Has obvious talent but is not considered good enough by Steve Bruce, to make the first 16.

Matthew Jarvis, a tricky winger who plays for Gillingham FC of league 1 and is nearly out of contract. Has attracted interest from a lot of top clubs but has only had firm interest from lesser outfits.

These are the facts. Another fact is that neither Danns nor Jarvis consider Forest an attractive enough proposition to even join on loan and in Jarvis`s case, a lot more money. You can say what you like about ambition or cash but the fact of the matter is that neither of these players are interested in joining Nottingham Forest at the current time.

Not only is this a marker of how far we have fallen, but it is also suggesting that we can`t compete for the kind of players that we should be able to attract given our league position, history and infrastructure. Clearly we are not a very attractive proposition anymore and to be honest, David Prutton would never have joined if he had not started his career here.

Being in league 1 is like having a cancer running through the club. Slowly killing all that is good and replacing it with dead matter. It seems that what we deem as good players will not come while we still have this monkey on our back so we have to take our chances with lower league players and loans.

The problem is that if we don`t go up we will lose good players and become even less attractive to potential targets. Kris Commons will go if we remain in this awful league and in all likelihood so will a few others, perhaps Tyson, Clingan, etc. What will become of us then? I have looked into the future and it is very grim if we remain in the league next year. Let us just hope that we manage to scrape enough points for second place or the gods smile upon us and we win the play-offs. The alternative does not bear thinking about does it?

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