Chairman Nicholas Randall QC says he accepts mistakes have “repeatedly” been made by senior management at Nottingham Forest.
And his biggest regret is a focus on “short-termism” in player recruitment.
It is almost four years since Randall took up his role at the club, following Evangelos Marinakis’ takeover in May 2017.
The Reds have had a considerable turnover of players during that time, most recently making 14 signings last summer and 12 during the 2019 summer window.
The latter led to a play-off charge under then-manager Sabri Lamouchi, which ultimately collapsed on the final day of the campaign.
Meanwhile, this time around, despite a heft shopping spree, Forest have spent the season battling at the wrong end of the Championship table - with Chris Hughton having replaced Lamouchi last October, following a miserable start.
In a Q&A with the Nottingham Forest Supporters’ Trust, Randall was asked if mistakes had been made by senior management.
He replied: “Yes, and repeatedly.
“We’re always going to make mistakes. It’s something you can’t avoid. Secondly, what’s important in life is when you make mistakes, you learn from them.
“At the end of the day, we are in the results business.
“I’m not going to sit here and do the administrative law defence and say, ‘at the time the decisions were taken they were all reasonable, based on the facts at that time’.
“I’m not going to say nobody identified that or suggested that the summer business just past was catastrophically bad or that we wouldn’t score many goals.
“But the reality is we haven’t scored the goals. Our league position is incredibly disappointing. And we have to accept that’s not good enough. We are in the results business.
“Then working out where you’ve actually gone wrong and how to correct it is a little bit more complicated.
“As chairman, I have to look at it and say I’ve got a recruitment team that, in the previous summer window had an outstanding result.
“As with any employment relationship, you’ve got to look at the proper picture; you’ve got to look at it in the round.
“I think if we are guilty of one thing which is significant, it would be that we have been, perhaps, too inclined to put short-termism first.
“We have had some stages where we have been very close to getting where we want to get to.”
Asked what he meant by short-termism, Randall added: “In terms of player turnover. If we had our time again, I think we would have taken it a little bit slower - not quite as slow as some people think we should, by the way.
“I respect the view about building and building over a number of seasons. But I think that is a model which itself has some weaknesses within it.
“We need to strike the right balance.
“Players are actually incredibly resilient. One of the things you learn quite early on is players are able to fit into teams and systems quite quickly.
“That would be our big mistake - that we perhaps rushed things.”
You can watch part one of the interview with Randall, here.
