Nottingham Forest’s much-maligned £150million recruitment drive has prompted Alan Rogers to ponder what might have been.
In 1998, the defender was part of the previous Forest side to win promotion to the Premier League. The team included Pierre van Hooijdonk, Kevin Campbell and Colin Cooper. They rampaged to the title under Dave ‘Harry’ Bassett and held the ambition of establishing themselves as a top-flight force once more.
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But instead of strengthening, Forest’s summer was a remarkable one for different reasons. They somehow contrived to head into the new campaign in a weaker position, with Cooper sold to former club Middlesbrough and Campbell — who had scored 23 goals in their promotion push — bizarrely sold to Trabzonspor. All of which famously prompted their other star forward — 29-goal Van Hooijdonk — to go on strike, in a form of ill-conceived protest.
Forest dropped back into the second tier and Bassett was sacked and replaced, briefly, by Ron Atkinson, a man who could not find the home dugout, never mind a convincing plan to escape relegation.
Back to square one does not quite cover it, with 23 long years passing before Steve Cooper arrived to finally lead Forest back into the top flight.
“I didn’t think it would be this long before Forest were back in the Premier League,” Rogers tells The Athletic. “If we had added one or two quality players, we would have been an established Premier League side for years, maybe. But when an owner does not back the manager, there is only going to be one outcome.
“I like what Forest have done this time around. They had to sign a lot of players because a lot of players left. They cannot be accused of not giving it a good go. When we were promoted, there was not a huge difference between the bottom eight sides in the Premier League and the top six in the Championship. That’s why, had we kept that team together, we would have been fine.
“Forest have gone up and spent £150million ($177m) — and the gap they are trying to close is massive. Even after all that spending, have Forest got one of the most valuable squads? No. They have just given themselves a chance of competing.”
Forest made 22 additions, breaking their transfer record twice, initially with the signing of Taiwo Awoniyi from Union Berlin for £17.5million and then when Morgan Gibbs-White joined from Wolves in a £25million deal.
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In the summer of 1998, Forest spent £900,000 on Dougie Freedman and £1.5million on Neil Shipperley to bolster their attacking options.
“Did I understand why Pierre went on strike? No. We were getting paid to do a job and, more than that, we owed it to the fans to give it our best,” says Rogers.
“I had a lot of time for Dougie and Neil. No disrespect to them, but they were not Pierre and Kev. ‘Harry’ should never have been sacked. He had key players taken away and was then set the impossible task of keeping us up. He had no budget. We signed players like Glyn Hodges. He was a great bloke, but he was also about 35. You are showing your ambition there, aren’t you?”
A year before, Forest had invested £2million wisely, to sign Rogers, a rampaging young full-back from Tranmere Rovers, but that move almost ended before it started.
“I was on holiday with my girlfriend — now my wife — in Cancun. Back then, nobody really had mobile phones. We were in the hotel room, getting ready to go out,” says Rogers. “The phone rang and it was somebody saying, ‘It is such and such from Nottingham Forest’. I put the phone down and told them where to go. I was convinced it was somebody taking the piss. I thought it was one of my mates winding me up.
“They had to call a few times, properly lay it on the line and say, ‘No, it really, really is Nottingham Forest, we want to sign you’. I was thinking, ‘Fucking hell, I’ve almost messed that one up before we have even started’. Once we did start talking seriously, Stuart Pearce was one of my idols, so that was the only place I was going to go.”
Rogers went on to make 152 starts and three substitute appearances, scoring 20 goals in four years at Forest. But life at the club did not begin entirely smoothly due to Rogers’ mischievous sense of humour — and not much in the way of common sense. It led to him missing out on his first few weeks of wages from his new club because of fines.
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“I have always been a bit of a joker, I still am. I have never grown up,” says Rogers. “In my first pre-season with Forest, we had to catch about three different flights to get home from Finland. The last one was from Amsterdam to the East Midlands.
“I don’t know to this day why I thought this would be a good idea, but I was waiting to go to the bathroom on the plane and had seen the stewardess make an announcement. I decided it would be funny to press the button ‘bing-bong’ and announce, ‘Brace, brace, we are going down, the plane is going to crash’.
“I saw it as a bit of banter, without realising the seriousness of it. You don’t think about the potential fallout when you are that age. It was not the best start to my Forest career, it annoyed some important people. But it did bed me in quite well with the lads.”
Rogers was also quick to win over fans, who held a historic appreciation of left-backs armed with attacking ambition. Rogers started all but one game during Forest’s promotion season and remained a key figure in the top flight, when he was voted their player of the season. Following relegation, he scored 11 goals in 1999-2000. But disaster struck in November 2000, when Rogers ruptured his ACL.
“When I got that injury, what followed was partly my own doing,” he says. “I was one of the main players then. We tried to rush me back. I just wanted to play and I ballsed my own career up, really. I tried to come back too soon.
“I kept breaking down. But then it got to the point where it wasn’t my fitness that was the problem, but the fact that I was on a good wage. The club were having financial difficulties. I offered to take a cut in wages or to spread the money out over a longer contract.
“But that did not materialise and Dave Bassett wanted me at Leicester, where he was now manager.”
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Rogers joined Leicester City for £300,000 in November 2001. It was unfortunate that, when Rogers returned to the City Ground for the first time, it coincided with a promotional event for the Boost chocolate bars — with predictable results. When he went to take a corner, Rogers found himself sheltering from a hail of confectionery.
“There were quite a few chocolate bars that day,” says Rogers, who took a bite out of one bar. “People did not understand why I had moved. We had just had our first baby. I did not want to move house. We had previously turned down a move to West Brom for similar reasons.
“I have nothing against Leicester, it is a great club, but the main reason I went there was because it was just a quick drive down the A46. Forest wanted me off their books for financial reasons. The Forest fans didn’t like me because I had gone to their rivals. But it was not the same for me there.”
Rogers jumped at the chance to return to Forest, initially on loan, in February 2004. But when manager Joe Kinnear departed in December 2004, after Rogers’ move had been made permanent, he was replaced by Gary Megson.
“It was a car crash waiting to happen for me,” says Rogers. “I had turned down a move to West Brom when he was manager there. The first thing he said to me was that it was going to be the end of my career at Forest.
“Marlon King, David Johnson, Paul Evans… we all got shipped out, away from the first-team squad. The club were redeveloping the academy at the time and we were made to get changed in a room made out of a shipping container.
“It got to a stage where I was not even allowed to park at the ground on a match day. Tel (Terry Farndale) the kit man — he was part of the heartbeat of the club, he was a legend, everyone loved him — he had to tell me that I couldn’t park when I turned up. I idolised Tel. He was an amazing fella. But the manager had told everyone that if I turned up, I had to be sent away.
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“It was ridiculous, when you consider what I had done for the club. Megson — he didn’t do me any favours. I don’t think he did himself many favours either.”
Rogers, unsurprisingly, is a much bigger fan of the current Forest manager.
“What I like about Cooper is that he has been willing to adapt at Forest, because they were too open. He has made them compact and difficult to beat. He deserves to have a full season in the Premier League and another year on top of that, no matter what. He took Forest from the bottom of the Championship to promotion. He surely has a lot of credit in the bank.”
After Rogers left Forest for a second time, initially joining Hull City on loan before moving to Bradford City in the summer of 2006, he, like many Forest players, remained in touch with Farndale, who was also a cult figure with fans, because of his habit of wearing only shorts and a t-shirt, even on the coldest winter days.
“I went back a few times to see him. Jack, my son, would love to see Tel when he was a kid. He would always have sweets,” says Rogers. That young man, Jack, is now on his own path in football, having signed a two-year contract with Burnley’s under-18s.
Rogers had a brief spell as an academy coach at Burnley, after filling several roles, including caretaker manager, during a two year-spell back at Tranmere. But he has no plans to return to football, instead preferring to focus on the racehorses he has a stake in, and his son.
“I missed a lot of Jack’s football when he was younger because I was still working in the game, so I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to see him play,” says Rogers. “He is just starting to find his feet. He has a chance. I just go and watch. His coaches coach him. If he wants my advice, I will tell him, but I don’t want to put any extra pressure on him, because there is enough pressure on young kids nowadays.
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“He is a super-talented lad. He is a central midfielder. He is totally different to me. He is a proper, cultured player — he is not a kick-it-and-run merchant. Although I guess I did not do too badly with that.”
(Top photo: Tony Marshall/EMPICS via Getty Images)
