After several months of inertia that threatened to destabilise the club, Nottingham Forest have finally found new owners – the Kuwaiti Al-Hasawi family.
They have bought the Championship club from the estate of Nigel Doughty, the previous chairman and life-long Forest supporter, who died last autumn.
The two-time European champions endured a difficult campaign last season, with Doughty’s decision to appoint Steve McLaren as manager proving disastrous, Steve Cotterill was later appointed to try and lift the club away from danger.
He did so, though with limited funds thanks to Doughty’s decision to put the club up for sale and later his untimely death significantly hampering efforts to secure vital investment. The deal has now been delivered though, with the Al-Hasawi’s promising to take Forest back ‘to the top’.
After several years in the footballing wilderness Forest fans are understandably excited as to what their new ownership can bring. Manchester City are the standard bearers as to what Middle Eastern oil money can do to a club. Though, it has to be pointed out that investment on that scale has not been promised at Forest.
They did though pledge to get them back into the Premier League, something a number of foreign owners are trying to do. And fans from within the bet365 community will watch on with interest.
Turned off by the debt ridden sides currently in England’s top flight, owners are seeing potential for a profit by buying Championship clubs for low price and then investing £25million or so in the playing staff with a view to getting them promoted.
Once in the cash-rich Premier League, they can be sold on for a handsome profit - Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore at QPR are two recent examples of businessmen making cash from promotion.
The only worry for Forest fans is that they are not the only club to have fallen into foreign hands – look at Leicester, Cardiff or Watford as examples. The owners of Cardiff are even going as far as changing the team’s shirt colour in return for investment. While Venkys of Blackburn as well as the ongoing sagas at Portsmouth and Birmingham are examples of when foreign owners go bad.
So therefore the supporters, while welcoming the new era, are holding back on their excitement and waiting to see whether the owners will deliver on their promises before celebrating their famous old club’s belated return to the big time.
The bet365 Ray Winstone advert will soon be back on our screens as we usher in the new football season. It promises to be another exciting few months at every level.
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