After reading the last few pages I have to put a word in for jbacsta.
ND was given a lot of grief by the fans - which may have hastened his death.
That tragedy left us in the lurch and we had to sell Bamford and Morgan.
The fans who yelled abuse at one owner led to Fawaz taking the reins. While he now looks like an idiot, there was a brief moment when Pearce was manager, Darlow and Lascelles had been sold to Newcastle and loaned back, and we'd signed Antonio and Assombalonga. We were top of the league after about six games.
Then we played Derby. Reid, Cohen and Hobbs all got injured and were out for the season. Without that triple whammy we might have gone up and fans would maybe see Fawaz in a better light...
As it is, the knee-jerk reaction is for fans to blame the owner. Or the manager. Or both. Never a pause to see how their constant sniping is part of the problem.
There are a few problems here.
Firstly, I am extremely uncomfortable with you suggesting forest fans were responsible for Doughty's death.
Did Doughty get some stick? Yes he did. We had been in the playoffs twice, making progress for the first time in a decade. He allowed 9 players to leave for free, sacked the manager and oversaw the worst transfer window in our history to leave us near the bottom of the table at the end of September when the protests began.
The protests at the Birmingham game were against Mark Arthur though. That was the planned protest, as he was very much seen as the man at fault. There was an impromptu protest after the game from a handful against Doughty, after which he announced he was Jacking it in.
Remember, this was pretty much the pre-twitter days. There was some stick on forums and some stick on radio phone ins. Nothing remotely like he would have nowadays. He then faced his first ever protest at the ground and called it a day.
This was the end of September. He died of SADS (basically means 'dunno' as far as I can tell) in early February, over 4 months later. I think it is absolutely disgraceful to link the two when even doctors cannot really account for a 54 year old man's sudden death while working out in his gym.
You are IMO misrepresenting the Pearce era as well. Yes, we were top of the table in September. But we never looked like a top of the table team. We were grinding out narrow wins, with very few games were we really Impressed. I remember saying at the time that we didn't look like a top side, and that sooner for later either performances would rise to the results or results would sink to the level of the performances.
The latter happened. You can blame the injuries in the Derby game if you like, but all three players (Reid less so) were injury prone anyway. Losing those three did indeed cost us results but made no difference to promotion because the man in charge was not good enough.
