I think what he wants to hear is that we are all actually so scared of Forest this coming season that we are staying out of this topic and keeping ourselves busy to stop the fear eroding our souls, whether we are out gardening, maybe hoovering the curtains or watching Brazil-Belgiuk and waiting for England's quarter final.
Let's face it, if they want to challenge, Forest need to spend money. They narrowly avoided relegation on the last day two years ago, and were something like 17th and 22 points off Derby last year.
And it's fine saying you made £32m and have spent £24m, but what generally eats up the money are player wages. It's normally increasing the wage bill beyond your means, rather than just the transfer fees. We'll find out how much Forest are stretching things in a few years. Very few championship clubs operate at a profit and generally when they want to push on, if they don't have the parachute payments, there's always that element of risking everything FFP-wise on making the Premier League (as Bournemouth did - they were hit with a £4m fine the other day, despite breaking the rules in their promotion season; Leicester did it too). If you're lucky enough to get promoted, the paltry fines greatly offset the money spent breaking the FFP rules and what you gain even in one PL season.
http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2016/05 ... e.html?m=1Presumably Forest's spending isnt over yet either. And weren't your debts paid off by your new owners? That's not really "living within your means" either, right? It's being the lucky beneficiary of a wealthy owner, like however many teams before you. So whilst Forest made money from player sales, there existing debts were cleared by the chairman, not by funds within the football club or generated through their footballing income.
Of course, Boro have a (relatively) wealthy owner in Steve Gibson, albeit a local millionaire rather than a foreign billionaire. We still have the PL money so don't have to worry about FFP this year. If we didn't though, we would also have to walk the tightrope between being compliant or being competitive. That's generally the life of a championship club, especially if you're down there for a while.
I think it's more about people viewing you as a bit hypocritical considering what you said about Wolves last year (who apparently didn't break FFP, though you only get the real picture of any club once the finances are released down the line).
We won't see the true cost of Forest's spending for a while yet, and a lot while also depend on where they finish in the league this season.
But no, no-one's scared of Forest. No team hoping to challenge for promotion should be frightened of any other teams down there.
I like Karanka, and hope he does well, to a certain degree. He's currently basically doing what he did with Boro - consolidate and survive the first half season, then rebuild in the summer. It was actually his second full season when we got promoted and we generally a more rounded side.