Frank’s fears as his Forest face the drop
FRANK CLARK thought his days of getting fraught over football were done. But tomorrow, such is the predicament of his beloved Nottingham Forest, the fingernails are under threat again.
A player in Brian Clough’s miracle team, a manager taking the club to third in the Premier League, and a chairman until the current owner came to town, Clark is familiar with every facet of Forest but will feel the strain when he watches the side’s do- or- die clash with Ipswich from the City Ground stands.
‘I will be trying not to get too nervous,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘I’ve been relaxed for a number of years now because I am not involved. But certainly in the home game against Reading, where it was imperative to win, I was as nervous as I have been at a football match for a long time.
‘It is very worrying. Anything could happen.’
Only goal difference is keeping Forest out of the relegation zone and such are the vagaries of final-day football that even a win might not be enough.
Should Blackburn beat Brentford by a margin of two goals better than Forest, and Birmingham, two points ahead, also win, then Forest would go down.
Still, defeat might end in delight if Blackburn also get beaten. The margins are fine.
‘I know Mick McCarthy very well, he won’t be in holiday mode, that’s for sure,’ says Clark of the Ipswich manager. ‘It will be a big crowd, but that might go the other way if things don’t start well. It’s down to the players. They have to make the tempo of the game as high as possible.’
Good energy has been a hallmark of home displays since Mark Warburton joined in March. The former Rangers manager had planned to take the job in the summer but his appointment was brought forward.
The pick of Evangelos Marinakis, who is set to take over from Fawaz Al-Hasawi as chairman even in the event of relegation, Warburton has given Forest a better chance of staying up with two wins and two draws in his short spell, but the 2-0 defeat at Queens Park Rangers last weekend raised fears.
‘I’ve never rowed with the wife so much as in the two days after the defeat at QPR,’ Warburton said yesterday. ‘I was about as much fun to be with as Victor Meldrew. Maybe slightly worse than that.’ Forest have experienced League One recently and took three seasons to return to the Championship in 2008. Relegation this time may be worse given the structure behind the scenes is so scant. Frank McParland joined as director of football a fortnight before Warburton, but there is still no chief executive or head of recruitment. ‘The structure at the club isn’t strong enough to support a Championship club,’ says Clark. ‘Then chopping and changing of manager and poor transfer policy in the summer is largely responsible for the position they are in now.’ Warburton, who once made billion- dollar deals as a City trader, is aware of the high stakes. Clark won the European Cup in 1979 with Forest and his team-mate Peter Shilton has said that this match is the most important since that era. ‘I’d be happier with the billiondollar deals — it wasn’t my money,’ said Warburton. ‘I won’t go against Peter Shilton. We know what’s at stake.’