May 16, 1999, the last time Nottingham played a home game in the top league of British football. Now more than 23 years later and on the eve of their home return, we take a look at what exactly went wrong for the club out of West Bridgford.
The downfall
The expectations were high for the upcoming season, Nottingham was determined to return to the FA Premier League as soon as possible! But despite spending over £12 million the first 2 seasons they finished on a disappointing 14th and 11th place. Not only the results on the pitch were worrying, Nottingham Forest were also in deep financial trouble. The club, stacked up huge debts and was at one point in time losing over £100,00 a week and it got even worse...
During the 04/05 season Nottingham was relegated to the League One (English 3rd league). Here Forest spent 3 seasons before being promoted back to the Championship. The next 5 years Nottingham came close to promotion multiple times.
The Al-Hasawi family
In the summer of 2012 Nottingham Forest was taken over by the Al-Hasawi family, this was the start of a 5 year period full of unrest and mediocre results. Forest sacked 6 managers and multiple high end people were dismissed or decided to leave the club during this period. Fans worried about their beloved football team as nor the results nor the general state of the club looked promising.
Building back up
In 2017 Evangelos Marinakis took over the club. The takeover looked promising as Nicholas Randall (Chairman) promised that Forest would play European football within 5 years. But despite spending lots of money on transfers, Nottingham was never really close to being promoted. In 2021 things changed! Nottingham decided to focus on young talents and to not spend more than £18,000 a week on a single salary. Steve Cooper took over on 21 September 2021 when Forest was in last place. He was able to bring them all the way to the 4th place and thus securing a place in the playoffs. Here they beat Sheffield United and later Huddersfield Town to return to the Premier league. Now the 2 time European Champions, are back where they belong, ready to make history once again!
