Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
If GulfWeekly’s prediction of a Bahrain-led consortium buying Leeds United comes to fruition, matches played in the English Championship on September 22 and Boxing Day will have added interest following the announcement last week that Nottingham Forest have been acquired by the Kuwait-based Al Hasawi family.
Fawaz and his brothers, Omar and Abdul Aziz, certainly made a grand entrance, promising at their first press conference that they would run the club with the best interests of the fans at heart, only to unceremoniously sack their popular manager, Steve Cotterill, the following day.
Of course, fans can be fickle and they were quickly appeased by the promise of an iconic manager. It shows they can have short memories with Cotterill himself forced to undo the damage done by former England coach Steve Maclaren at the start of the last campaign.
Rumours abound that the Kuwaiti owners will splash the cash, while at the same time are willing to import a number of members of the Kuwaiti national team.
If any of these rumours come to fruition, I predict that Forest’s East Midlands neighbours will be laughing. Indeed, lessons could be learnt with Leicester City last season spending heavily on the back of their Far Eastern benefactors, yet only achieved a similar result to Derby County who are run far more prudently.
The blood and guts football of the Championship is no place to flood too many inexperienced internationals and expect results.
History demonstrates that rarely do the so-called ‘big name’ managers succeed by lavishing heavily on high-profile players who have little appetite for life out of the spotlight.
Leeds fans will hope that, should the Bahrain investment dream be realised, they do not follow a similar path. It’s one thing to have financial investment but another completely to use it wisely.
The managerial rumours suggest a former England manager will be recruited at Forest – given the Middle East connections I’m surprised that our very own Peter Taylor has not been mentioned. Given his experiences in the region he would be a wiser choice than many of the current names touted by the media.
