Godfather Of Champions

Wood had no intentions of discussing about his impending retirement in front of the interim manager, Greenwood, and club chairman, Evan Doughty. Faced with the intense pressing of the reporters, he remained tight-lipped, as if nothing ever happened.

Evan breathed a huge sigh of relief.

No matter what, the crisis had been averted for now. However, Evan Doughty could not feel relaxed about it. With the piling up of all the negative news such as the continuous defeats, the frequent change in managers and the rumor of Wood’s retirement, the Arabian consortium suddenly changed their minds. Although they did not indicate that they wanted to stop all negotiations about taking over Nottingham Forest Football Club, they had obviously slowed the process down and they had also leaked out some news to indicate that they would prefer to take over the club at a lower price.

This was something that Evan Doughty did not wish to see. Allan Adams was on the receiving end of numerous scolding from the chairman with a growing temper. Even though there was a friendship between them coming from the time when they started their careers together, it had been more than a few decades, the friendship had already faded. Besides, he was the most trusted person for Evan, yet he could not settle such a major issue properly, how could Evan not be infuriated by that?

Ever since Tony Twain left, Allan Adams was the only one that Evan Doughty could depend on in the club. However, Allan’s performance planted a doubt in Evan’s mind——He might not be able to depend on this person in future.

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Tony Twain did not return to Los Angeles just because Wood went back to attend training and play in the matches as the matter was far from being resolved. Besides, now that Wood was back at work, he had to stay behind to take care of Sophia. Even though Miss Vivian was around, Twain was the only one who could have a heart to heart talk with Sophia.

Therefore, Twain gave Shania a call to inform her that he would not be able to return for a while, and if she was not too busy after her work concluded, she could come to Nottingham too. After Shania heard that Sophia was not doing well, she specially gave her a call to check up on her. She agreed with Twain’s request without any other conditions.

Twain had originally sneaked back without any media knowing about it. However, as he stayed on, the media eventually caught wind of his whereabouts too. It was not long before pictures of Twain visiting the hospital appearing on the sports section of a few newspaper.

The day after news of Twain’s return hit the newspaper, there was a special guest for him at Sophia’s ward.

Officially, Evan Doughty was visiting Sophia on behalf of the club to wish her a rapid recovery, however, in truth, he was here for Twain.

“When did you come back? Why didn’t you tell me?” Evan Doughty acted as though he was very close to Twain in the visitor’s room outside.

Twain smiled, “A couple of days ago. I was too busy to tell you. You still came, didn’t you?”

This was the first time the two of them met each other face to face in four years. The conflicts they had then was already water under the bridge. At least, one could never imagine that they had treated each other as enemies before from what he observed on the surface.

Later, the two of them chatted about anything under the sun, except for football and the recent difficult times that the club faced. Eventually, when they had nothing else to talk about, Evan Doughty took his leave.

Twain saw him out until the entrance of the ward. After Evan left, he returned to the ward and was deep in thoughts on the couch.

Based on his understanding of Evan Doughty, he would always bring Allan Adams with him, no matter where he went. However, he came to “visit” Sophia alone this time. Even though Evan said that Allan did not come because he was in-charge of negotiating with the Arabs, it had become public knowledge that the Arabian consortium had called off the negotiations for now and had returned to UAE. This had even been reported in the minor newspaper as they wanted to reconsider their offer for Nottingham Forest Football Club. It was obvious that they did not think that the price quoted by Evan Doughty was a fair evaluation of such a terrible club. It did not matter how glorious its past was, a businessman would only care about now and the future, not the past. If it could not bring them profit now, then there would be no value to them. If there was no room for improvement in the future, then the value would be even lower.

Everyone knew by now that the takeover of Nottingham Forest had reached an impasse, but the Forest fans did not know what they should be feeling now. They were tired of the club chairman who had brought them countless glorious moments before but was just a clown now. However, they did not wish to see their club handed over to a bunch of Arabs who knew nothing about football, about English football in particular. Just take a look at Manchester City, a mercenary team built by money. They were just a plaything for the Arabs.

As one of the clubs with the longest history in the world, how could it fall to such an extent?

If Nottingham Forest was a club like Notts County, the fans could resort to crowdfunding and buying the club themselves. However, Nottingham Forest was a club with a long history and glorious achievements, it was not a club that could be taken over by the fans through donations alone. Tony Twain’s annual earnings were quite considerable, but even his life’s savings were not enough to take over the club, unless he could get a more powerful consortium to invest in it. However, he had never had any contact with the financial world as he had no interest in it. Evan Doughty placed a price of 1.2 billion pounds for the sale of the club, which the media mocked as an unattainable price. Nottingham Forest was under a debt of 400 million pounds, after taking that into consideration, the club was worth 500 million pounds at most, which meant that a price of 900 million would be reasonable. The Arabs drove a tough bargain too, offering a price of 600 million pounds. After using 400 million pounds to pay off the debt, the club was only worth 200 million pounds in the eyes of these people from the middle east.

It was no wonder why many Nottingham Forest fans did not like the Arabian consortium at all, with an offer like that——For a team that had a history of winning five UEFA Champions League, an actual offer of 200 million pounds was a humiliation. That was why the Forest fans were tired of the “selling drama” that Evan Doughty put on every season on one hand, yet on the other hand, they did not want the Arabs to really take over the club.

Twain was still deep in thoughts.

Allan Adams was Evan Doughty’s right-hand man, and he was fully in-charge of negotiations with the Arabian consortium. In Nottingham Forest Football Club, which could no longer be considered as a listed company, Allan Adams was the most powerful person after Evan Doughty. However, Allan did not come with Evan this time. Twain was very concerned about this.

Could this be a sign of Evan’s attitude?

He knew that Evan Doughty was a person who craves power, that was why Twain did not believe that he came alone today because Allan was “tied up at work”.

Looks like something is brewing internally in Nottingham Forest Football Club…

But, what has that got to do with me?

Twain shook his head and stood up. He decided to go for a walk as his identity was already exposed so it did not matter anymore. It was a good opportunity for him to visit his old friends at Forest Bar.

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If Wood had read “The Romance of Three Kingdoms”, then he must have understood the story of “being in the Cao camp but mind is in the Shu camp”. His situation now was the typical “being in the Cao camp but mind is in the Shu camp”. Even though he rejoined the team and the training, his mother’s condition did not get better and she was still very weak. She even had to be warded into the clean room this week, which was a sign of her illness getting worse.

Under such a situation, how could he remain calm and focus on training and the match? Wood was just human after all, with blood, flesh and emotions, and not really just a piece of wood. He was also not a robot killer from the future. Even though he promised his mother that he would rejoin the team, she could not control his emotions. He missed his mother, and she did not forbid him from missing her.

Greenwood had no solutions for that either. He was not an expert in controlling a player’s mentality, and Wood did not listen to him either. There was only one manager whom Wood would willingly listen to, but that person had already retired.

His teammates could do nothing about it too. Nobody could possibly ask Wood to focus on football and lead by example at this moment as they had no rights to do so. As the only kin to Wood, his mother was lying in the clean room in the hospital now, with her life in danger. What they should do now was actually to persuade Wood to forget about football for now and take care of his mother, not request him to stay in the training grounds to lead by example, playing football without care for his family. To these professional players, football was just a job. No job could be more important than family.

However, once Wood made his decision, there was basically no room for anyone to change his mind. That was why even Wood’s best friend, “Little Monkey” Bale, could not persuade him to go back and take care of his mother.

The Europa League match that followed was George Wood’s first game after his return to the team. In the end, he performed very badly in the game. Even though he ran a lot, he was running like a headless chicken. He could not organize the attack or defense. Nottingham Forest’s tactic revolved around George Wood. If Wood performed badly, the team would be like a pile of sand scattered in the wind, without any organization.

In the end, Nottingham Forest lost 0:2 to Sporting Lisbon at home.

For the next match in the League two days ago, Nottingham Forest faced Fulham at home. George Wood’s performance did not improve, but Greenwood changed his tactics and did not use Wood as the core, choosing to use Balotelli as the core instead, focusing all the attacking moves around him. Under Balotelli’s impressive performance, the team defeated Fulham 2:1 at home to put an end to their slump.

However, the good times did not last. In the next league match next week, Nottingham Forest lost to Newcastle. This time, using Balotelli as the core did not achieve the required impact as it was much easier to mark out a forward than a defensive midfielder…

Nottingham Forest’s position in the table stopped dropping after the last round in the league temporarily, but it continued after the loss to Newcastle. Losing the Blackburn 1:3, then losing to Tottenham Hotspurs by 0:1… By the end of October, Forest’s position had slipped from 10th to 14th. For the whole October, other than a 2:1 victory over Fulham, there was no other victories. There was not even a draw other than that. They only managed three points despite playing five games in October.

There was something even more troubling for Evan Doughty which followed. After leading the team for just four games, Greenwood felt that he was not ready to lead the first team yet after three losses. He approached Evan Doughty after the defeat against Tottenham Hotspurs, hoping that the club chairman would agree to him leaving the post as manager of the first team and return to coaching the youth team.

How could Evan Doughty possibly agree? He was already finding it difficult to find a suitable manager. However, his desire to keep him as manager was no match for Greenwood’s strong desire to leave his post and he had no choice but to agree to Greenwood quitting as manager of the first team eventually.

Next, Evan Doughty had little choice but to name Freddie Eastwood as the next interim manager, to manage the team while he looked for a suitable manager.

To be honest, if Eastwood had a choice, he would definitely choose not to take this job. Firstly, he did not think that he was good enough to become manager, and the second reason was naturally because Nottingham Forest was like a blackhole for managers now. No matter how good, or competent a manager was, he would suffer reputational damage if he took over this job.

Eventually, Eastwood could only take the job unwillingly. He did not show any joy of being promoted to manager during the press conference. Even though it was quite interesting for him to manage his previous teammates, he had no mood to joke about it. When faced with questions by the reporters regarding the team’s results and outlook, he merely said that he hoped he would not let the supporters and the club down, and he said nothing else. The atmosphere of the press release was a little uninteresting.

After the press release, the media released their articles describing the outlook for Nottingham Forest as bleak. This time, they were not trying to smear Nottingham Forest, or going against Nottingham Forest on purpose. They were simply stating the truth now. Even the most die-hard Nottingham Forest fan would come up with the same conclusion now.

“Looks like Evan Doughty should change their target for this season——It should be to avoid relegation, instead of qualifying for the Champions League…”