“Yes I regret going to Forest, I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place If I’d known I would be called a week into pre-season to be told the way I was running the club was not the way they wanted to run it”- Forest Legend Martin O’Neill says he regrets accepting City Ground coaching role in 2019
The Northern Irishman lasted just 19 games at the helm of the Reds five years ago. He was appointed in January 2019, after Aitor Karanka had been given the boot, then was axed himself that summer.
The 72-year-old has been out of management since but has now replaced Howard Wilkinson as the head of the League Managers Association. And as he looks back on his career in the dugout, his spell at the City Ground sticks out for the wrong reasons.
“I had no idea when I left Forest that it would be my last job in management,” O’Neill told The Telegraph. “I had turned it down a number of times previously and felt like I had to take it when it was offered again. I took it far too personally, in the sense I was angry about it. I took it too seriously.”
He added: “Do I regret going to Forest? Yes, absolutely I regret going to Forest. If I’d known we would win the last three games of the season and I would be called in a week into pre-season training to be told the way I was running the football club was not the way they wanted to run it – which is how they put it – I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
“I have a special relationship with the football club, but playing and managing are two totally different things. You are almost a different person. Is there a pang of regret I didn’t take it earlier in my career, because of that connection… maybe.
“I had the most phenomenal time there as a player, particularly the last five years of my tenure under Brian Clough. You think about the negative end, but I have to differentiate a 19-game spell as manager and 10 years there as a player which I absolutely loved. It’s not to be patronising or sycophantic, but those years there as a player, being a professional footballer in England, coming over from Ireland as a young man way back in 1971, getting paid to play the game, not phenomenally, but more than the average wage, it was a brilliant time.”
