Nottingham Forest are fast approaching two years under a transfer embargo, but thanks to the hard work of manager Dougie Freedman they may emerge from it in a better state than they went in.
Nottingham Forest should, really, be quite friendly with Queens Park Rangers. Like a kindly, soft-hearted grandfather, Rangers always arrive in this part of the world bearing gifts — 30 visits to the City Ground, 18 defeats, 12 draws, 0 wins. Rarely has the "can we play you every week?" ditty seemed so apt.
The clubs also, in recent history at least, have plenty in common. Both taken over by rich backers from the East who arrived in a blaze of positive PR and flying banknotes, optimism abounded as serious transfer fees were splashed on players with the Premier League in mind.
Forest spent some serious wedge (for a Championship club) on the likes of Kelvin Wilson, Lars Veldwijk, Britt Asombalonga, Michael Mancienne and 19 others for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons. Problem was, Fawaz Al-Hasawi and his family gave the money first to Billy Davies, then to Stuart Pearce.
Davies, always something of a divisive character/twat, spent most of his second spell with the club settling scores from his first, both with staff at the City Ground and members of the press. Pearce, God bless him, has never looked like becoming the sort of manager his playing career and persona suggested he might be. Despite an excellent start to last season — unbeaten in the first 11 league games and top of the division in September — he predictably faded badly winning only three of the next 18 before he was sacked. To be fair, he suffered injuries to key players and secured a memorable win at local rivals Derby along the way, but it would be a brave club to buy into the concept of 'Psycho — The Manager' again now.
Chips placed, promotion missed, the league's worthy but ill-thought-through Financial Fair Play rules have bitten Forest hard. A transfer embargo has been in place for 18 months, and was recently renewed through until the end of the season.
It's here where QPR and Forest part ways, and is the source of some considerable — understandable — bitterness in the East Midlands. QPR spent far more than Forest — infamously lashing out just shy of £80m on wages alone for their 2013/14 promotion from this division. But thanks to one swing of Bobby Zamora's boot at Wembley, and the promotion it achieved, the R's moved out of the Football League jurisdiction for a year which meant, according to said ham-fisted rules, they were only liable to pay a fine, and only if they returned to the Football League.
Having, predictably, duly done so within a year QPR launched a legal challenge against the rules as written, which would have levied a fine so punitive against the club - £60m has been quoted — it would have resulted in bankruptcy. Such disproportionate fines are not legally safe, and so the two parties have locked in talks ever since. The situation is now dragging on into 2016 with no end in sight. The league has since relaxed the rules that Forest and QPR originally breached, to allow a bigger annual loss than the original £6m, and knows a finding against it in the QPR case could bring other clubs who have been punished, and their lawyers, knocking at the door.
QPR's reckless approach to financial management has been a source of some considerable embarrassment to the club and its supporters, but they are right to challenge the original rules as they were written — apparently by a few dozen monkeys with a few dozen typewriters down at Football League HQ.
You can understand why Forest are upset though. Forbidden from paying transfer fees for players, they've been restricted to free transfers and loans, with a maximum wage cap of £10,000 a week, for a year and a half now. It's severely inhibited Pearce's replacement Dougie Freedman arresting the decline he inherited. Matt Mills and Jamie Ward are impressive additions, given the restrictions, but the ban has come at a time when the club has also developed a knack of picking up serious, long term injuries — Asombalonga has been out for more than a year, strike partner Matt Fryatt hasn't played this season, Spaniard Daniel Pinillos is out for the foreseeable having impressed at full back.
Faced with that, and a run of results through September and October that threatened to cost the manager his job, Freedman has adopted a new approach. Forest are now one of those new-fangled, modern outfits that deliberately cedes possession of the ball and position on the field, inviting all the pressure, in the hope of springing effective counter attacks. It's a style that has proved suitable for their two very canny loan signings — Ryan Mendes from Lille and former Swansea man Nelson Oliveira from Benfica, both of whom were key to the win at Loftus Road.
Freedman's men have now lost only one of the last ten. The style certainly has its drawbacks — watching them try to see through an hour against Leeds while 1-0 up over Christmas was artery hardening even for a neutral, and ultimately unsuccessful. That match finished in a draw, as have four of the last five. But Forest have been having to find cheats, short-cuts and smart thinking for months now and are doing so on the field.
With the sale of Michail Antonio to West Ham for £6m profit last summer, and the ongoing cuts to expenditure, they should emerge from their embargo this summer, potentially leaving a streamlined organisation and squad with an adept manager to have a dig at promotion from a healthy position next summer. QPR, meanwhile, without the embargo, have continued to saddle themselves with more players, more wages, more managers, more blood — and all for no gain whatsoever.
While Forest fans cry foul, there's a school of thought at QPR that says an embargo that teaches the club to run itself properly wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Given the presence of the likes of Leroy Fer, Sandro, Rob Green and others in this season's QPR squad, it probably won't be long before that's put to the test.
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