Anything to back that up? I'd be pretty surprised to be honest. They haven't won anything significant for decades and they haven't been in the top-flight since the 90s.
I don't know one Forest fan. As said they haven't won anything for ages, surely only local people and eighty year olds support them.
These are only opinion pages, can't find actual figures. we get honourable mentions in them too http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...-how-do-you-measure-a-clubs-size-8570655.html http://www.bigclubornot.co.uk/nottinghamforest.html http://www.ftbpro.com/posts/kieran....eague-20-biggest-clubs-in-the-english-leagues http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130910162647AAyE8na I know 2 other Southampton fans from living and working in Lincoln. Probably gauge that from school years from 8 years old (when many people start getting into football) right through to now at 38. Add all those school kids, work colleagues, aquaintances from pubs, just people you see around, people from my town on the web and that must add up to many thousands, maybe as much as 100,000 people met or seen over that time through those 30 years. The 2 Saints fans? 1 was in my year at school. The only other is the chap on here called Lincoln Saint. There you have it. Met one when I was 11 and he was the same age as me. Haven't met the other apart from on this very forum. Compare that to Forest. I would say Forest fans that I actually know well as friends, colleagues or just people I know that I have or do speak to is in the 100s maybe more than that. There were as many Forest fans as there were Man U or Liverpool when I was at school. There are still kids that wear Forest shirts around. One person I know more from playing against him in pool leagues has 2 sons who were lucky enough to both get into Forest's academy. So it is regional I suppose. I guess down South there are no Forest fans around. Up here there are no Saints fans around. Wolves are another that strangely have some support right across the Midlands. You could however look at that another way. I bet down in Hampshire there are probably a lot more Arsenal and Chelsea fans than up here. ManU and Liverpool are all over the place but there aren't that many Arsenal or Chelsea fans. There are probably more Tottenham fans than either of those for some reason. I wouldn't put even a pound though on us having more fans worldwide than Forest. My wife's family from Portugal had never heard of Southampton before they met me. They hadn't heard of Lincoln either. When describing as near to Nottingham the reply was...Ahhh Nottingham Forest. I should add that my eldest son does make it 3 Saints fans I know. Pity my youngest supports Man City
Here's a good one http://www.isportconnect.com/index....don-furse-&catid=63:soccerfootball&Itemid=186 and this is cute too: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=103671694&postcount=279
Don't know about the club sizes, but I was ruling out Nottingham Forest as a desirable post for Cortese more based on the fact that their owner seems fairly hands-on.
Depends. They are already pretty hands on with other clubs in Asia. Maybe they don't have the time or hours to be as hands on with another. Or maybe They would see Cortese as proven and given a contract being able to get them to the Premier League sooner rather than later. Like those articles say, Forest has massive potential to become a pretty big global brand because of their achievements under Cloughie. The longer time goes the fewer people remember them and the further they fall behind others. They are actually one of those clubs that I like for the romance really. Cool badge, cool history, cool former players and Garry Birtles Trevor Francis was a great player. They did what Chelsea and Man City are doing now but without pissing everybody off. lol.
Historically, sure. But are they really bigger than we are at this point in time? International fan base could probably be fairly accurately gauged using the number of twitter followers, and this site has a league table: http://www.folos.im We are 62nd in the world and Forest are 128th. Comparing the number of 'likes' on facebook gives similar numbers.
Do you know how old I am? Look up something ending in "saurus" and it will say, "old fart with an ignorance to social networking; allegedly extinct" I don't think I'll judge the size of a club by the number of facebook and twitter fans. I'd probably say today that the combination of current status, relative recent history (in my time) I'd say we are pretty similar. Forest are a bigger club than people realize.
If you mean that older fans who are more likely to remember Forest's glory days are not as likely to be on twitter or facebook, then that's a fair point. It is the best measure I could think of though. Although the true number of fans might be closer than those metrics would suggest, I'd still put us ahead.
twitter and facebook are not great indicators mainly down to the Premier League tie ins. There are loads of people that end up being 'followers' of all Premier League clubs purely by being interested in the Premier League itself. You've also got to add that twitter and facebook are massively abused/used (depending which way you look at it) by people/companies that utilise free advertising. There was a list or report somewhere that the % of 'real' followers of the twitter figures and the % that were robots or spiderbots (or whatever) that were included in the numbers. I think it was mentioned on the Celtic forum when they were saying you can't really go by twitter or facebook figures. I think many Premier League clubs like Chelsea, Wigan had high percentages of 'not real' followers in the region of 65% real / 35% not real where Celtic (not being 'bhoyed up' by Premier League membership) were one of the highest percentage 'real' followers. Like 85% real or something like that. Forest aren't a big big club but if you or I walked around in Greece or Turkey on holiday in a Saints shirt with a friend who had a Forest shirt, the locals would see the Forest shirt and say 'Nottingham Forest'. Then they would recognise the Saints shirt and say 'Sooonderland'. I have experienced the latter both in Greece, Turkey and Portugal. lol.
If we still wore red and white stripes it would yes. Although I hate to admit it Sunderland are more well known abroad than Saints and if you ask most people (including the majority of English fans) they would say that atletico and athletic got their red and white stripes from Sunderland Nothing to do with 'our second season back' When I went to Turkey Saints were in their first long long run in the Prem, Sunderland were a yo-yo club yet the Turkish jewellery harranger bellowed 'Engleeesh......Sooonderland'. I smiled when I though he recognised my shirt and was let down again. lol We probably do have more global followers than Forest at the moment purely because of the division we are in and also that we are doing well however if Forest were to come back up then the media would jump on them even if they were struggling and it would be the QPR style love in again and they would shoot past us, whilst probably not being able to compete with us on the pitch.
He's heading back to Ennetbaden and selling his home in Southampton. His boys were withdrawn from school on Friday, apparently. Back to Switzerland for the Cortese family... who can blame them! I don't think we'll see him appear in British football, maybe not even on the continent.
I hope he realises how much we appreciate what he did for us. It must have been very hard for him to take when he lost control at Southampton...I can understand that he didn't feel he could stay without complete control...although KLs demands for input was completely reasonable. I suspect that he won't get involved with football again...he will no doubt return to his day job. Goodbye and thanks, Nicola.
His home is Switzerland is a Cave where he will plot his return. Will be interesting to see what he does next. Obviously his job at Southampton would open many jobs in the world of football to him, but if you take the reason for his resignation as control it's very unlikely he will be afforded anything like the kind of control he got here. No doubt he left Southampton a far wealthier man and I suspect he will start his own enterprise, whether that remains in the world of football is another matter.
