Forest call in a firefighter

Gary Megson has been back in work only three weeks but long enough, one suspects, to appreciate why Arsene Wenger once declared that "only a masochist" goes into management. His departure from West Bromwich Albion was so acrimonious the scars will probably never fade and even his friends wanted him to stay away from Nottingham Forest, a club that appeared to have based their 21st-century strategy on chaos theory.

As a player, Megson was swiftly shipped out of the City Ground when Brian Clough discovered his pre-match nerves meant he was often sick in the dressing-room. As the eighth man in 12 years to attempt to fill Clough's shoes, Megson would be excused for feeling nauseous with worry again. Forest are second bottom of the Championship and today they travel to the club below them, Rotherham United. They are seven points adrift of safety, and, in football parlance, are on the brink of "doing a Sheffield Wednesday".

"I've got a couple of friends in management who rang me asking, 'Why the hell are you going there?'" he says. "These are people who run football clubs properly, clubs that are geared for success.

"I'm not going to criticise anybody who was here before me, but there are certain things in terms of how Forest has been run that I will not do the same. The training will have to change, the match preparations will change, the backroom staff has already changed and the same will apply for the first team in terms of their attitude and approach."

Famed for his motivational powers, Megson's sleeves-up, follow-me attitude may be long overdue at a club that had wallowed in apathy and self-pity during Joe Kinnear's regime. Relegation, he says, is now a "probability", but under his iron rule there is no way his players will collect their jackets and politely show themselves out.

"The minimum requirement is hard work," he says. "Anything else is totally out of order. If a supporter watches us and goes away complaining that we have not defended or passed the ball well then, fine, we can work on those things. But if anyone genuinely believes we have not given everything then we will have committed a crime."

Megson's demands for lung-splitting endeavour may not always endear him to his players but nobody can dispute his record for rehabilitating and re-motivating stagnant teams. "I read an article recently that described my managerial career before I went to West Brom as 'patchy'. Yet I took Stockport to their highest position in 125 years and Blackpool to within three points of the play-offs.

"I was sacked at Stoke when they were second top and I turned West Brom completely around," he adds. "That club had been down to the (former) second division and had done nothing for 20 years. I left them 16th in the Premiership - out of the relegation spots - and I still firmly believe they will stay up."

His 76 days out of the game gave him plenty of time to reflect on his split from The Hawthorns. Revered by the fans, Megson was reviled by the chairman Jeremy Peace. Neither tried too hard to disguise the mutual antipathy and when Megson announced he would not renew his contract at the end of the season Peace decided to sack him.

Since then, Megson has shied away from criticising his former employers, acutely aware that the Albion fans still idolise him. He has also signed a confidentiality agreement but, choosing his words carefully, he is anxious to get a few things in the open.

"I'm so bitter towards West Brom it's not true. Not the supporters, not the players, but the people who run the club," he says. "If a manager was there only six months and made a right 'tommy' of it I could understand that he might leave on bad terms. But not when somebody has brought in £100 million plus over five years, consistently made profits and won promotion twice to the Premiership. For the people on that board to treat me the way they did . . . I'm very, very bitter about it. The supporters aren't stupid at West Brom. They know. I will cherish my relationship with them for the rest of my life. But I feel I was treated badly."

Diatribe over, the subject returns to Forest. "We've got the stadium, the support base, the infrastructure. This is a really good football club . . . until we get to the first team and the results we've been getting. Yet we've got some big-name players at this level and one of the highest wage bills. So something is clearly wrong. Everybody has got to start pulling their finger out."

He does not name names, but is clearly appalled by some of the bad habits that form part of Kinnear's legacy, not least the number of players who live two hours' drive from Nottingham and the fact they have the worst disciplinary record in the country. He has made Kinnear's first two signings, Andy Impey and Alan Rogers, available for transfer along with the former captain David Johnson, and Mick Harford and Des Walker were released from the coaching staff on his first day. Megson likes to do things "my way" - which, of course, was Clough's approach, too.

"There are 16 games to go and we're going to have to show promotion form," he says. "If we're being brutally honest, it (relegation) is a probability. But we're going to give it everything."

Kinnear's parting shot was that Forest were "stuck in a time-warp" but Megson is smart enough to realise the club "should be proud of their history".

A quarter of a century has passed since Clough lifted the European Cup for a second time, yet go to Anfield on any match-day and you will still hear a full-blooded rendition of "we hate Nottingham Forest . . ." A younger generation of Liverpudlians might believe it is simply because "Nottingham Forest" has the correct number of syllables to fit the song. Older fans, however, will remember the days when unfashionable, unheralded Forest replaced Liverpool as Europe's dominant force.

The memories are still vivid enough for the Nottingham public to be consumed by snobbishness about the muddy waters of English football's third tier. They have not plummeted that low since their season in division three (South) in 1950-51 but it will be a near certainty if they lose today at Rotherham.

Megson, articulate and impressive, says the feat of escapology that is needed represents the "biggest challenge of my career", especially now Forest have sold their most prized assets, Andy Reid and Michael Dawson, to Tottenham Hotspur. Right now the City Ground is a cathedral with nothing to worship.