“It’ll be hard to leave City Ground, but the stadium and training ground are not befitting the status and ambitions of the club”- Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis admits Reds are now set to leave City Ground as club open negotiations over move to Toton

Nottingham Forest could be set to move from the City Ground says owner Evangelos Marinakis

Evangelos Marinakis has admitted that it will be a hard decision for the club to leave the City Ground, but he believes it will set Nottingham Forest on a different path.

The club’s owner has opened up on the future at the historic ground with the painful admission that the club needs to move to a bigger facility to push forward and match his ambitions for the Reds.

“The stadium and training ground are not befitting the status and ambitions of the club,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.

The club are currently at loggerheads with the council over the rent and lease situation at the City Ground with Marinakis leading a charge to find new potential venues for the club, something NottinghamshireLive has reported on extensively.

Yesterday we called on the club to be transparent about the future of the stadium, and it appears that was very much already in the mind of Marinakis who plans to lead a supporter consultation on the issue.

The Greek owner wants to see the club in a 50,000 seater all-purpose stadium with state of the art training facilities and Academy set-up and his reasoning is hard to deny.

“It will change the history in years to come of the region and the team for our supporters,” he said.

“It’ll be hard to leave City Ground, but in an age when revenue streams dictate success on the pitch, there’s no doubt moving to a bigger facility will set the club on the right path.”

“Over the last 10 years, the city of Nottingham has lacked the confidence and ambition of the other big regional cities of Manchester and Birmingham,” he says.

Nottinghamshire County Council has confirmed that it has been approached by Forest to use land in Toton previously earmarked for HS2 as an alternative stadium site. The Conservative-led authority has just signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Forest, which the council says will see it support the club’s ambitions to “deliver new training and stadium infrastructure.”