Forest sack Billy Davies: first reaction

LTLF generally has a neutral editorial policy, but the breaking news that Nottingham Forest have terminated Billy Davies’ contract one year short prompts me to put on record my utter shock and disgust at the actions of the Forest board.

Billy Davies, as previously stated by several contributors to this site, has been the most consistently successful manager at Forest since Frank Clark. To sack him weeks after our second successive participation in the play-offs (which in itself is an over-achievement considering our meagre squad) is disgraceful. What ever happened to the old maxim of football being a results business?

Since Nigel Doughty became officially involved with this club, his axe has swung on the necks of Paul Hart, Joe Kinnear, Gary Megson, Colin Calderwood and now Billy Davies. Each of these men have been hired and subsequently fired in a range of circumstances, but in most cases there have been strong suggestions that the manager wasn’t receiving adequate support from the Forest board.

If you were a football manager, would you want to work for this club under the current regime? It seems that no matter what your contract, no matter what your success, if your face doesn’t fit with the chairman’s caprices then you will find yourself sacked. Steve McClaren, I suggest you think long and hard about putting your name on a Nottingham Forest contact.

To Billy Davies, and I think I speak for most Forest fans here, I wish the very best of luck and thank him for all he has done for this club. We’ve enjoyed some great football in the last two and a half years and if luck had been on our side (not to mention the board on the manager’s side) we might well have finally returned to the Premiership.