T HE good news for Alex McLeish as he starts out on his latest managerial adventure, with Nottingham Forest, is that he is clearly well thought of by the club's owners.

The bad news is that the club's supporters don't seem quite so keen.

Not long after taking over at the Midlands club in the summer, Fawaz and Abdulaziz al-Hasawi, Forest's Kuwaiti backers, decided that Steve Cottrell was not the manager for them. Six months on and, with Forest lying in eighth place in the npower Championship and just a point off the play-off places, they got rid of Sean O'Driscoll, too. The owners, clearly not willing to play the long game, wanted a manager with "Premier League experience" and, despite Roy Keane and Roberto Di Matteo being talked of as potential high-profile candidates, decided McLeish was the man for the job. That will surely come as some solace as the Scot looks to rebound from recent disappointments at Birmingham City and Aston Villa.

The Nottingham Forest supporters, however, don't seem quite as convinced. The act of judging managers before they have even taken office, rather than waiting until they are actually doing the job, is becoming increasingly commonplace and Sky Sports were not slow to track down fans hanging outside the club's stadium and training ground for their opinion on the latest appointment. The feedback wasn't entirely positive. Forest are one of those clubs forever held back by nostalgia – not unlike Aberdeen in some regards – and the chat from supporters, of McLeish "not playing the style of football Forest are accustomed to", would have given McLeish a flavour of what he is up against. It is now 32 years since Brian Clough's side won their second successive European Cup but it has created a benchmark that none of Clough's successors, unsurprisingly, have been able to live up to.

Supporters, though, are a fickle bunch. Just ask Rafael Benitez. The vitriolic and widescale abuse that greeted his appointment as Chelsea manager has noticeably been dialled down a notch in recent weeks as results have picked up. Putting eight past Villa and five past Leeds United have appeased fans who, not so long ago, were claiming that they would never give the Spaniard their backing.

Now all McLeish needs is to do the same. He inherits a Forest side in relatively good health and with plenty of time to lift them into play-off contention or even one of the two automatic promotion places. The timing of his appointment also suggests he will be given funds with which to reshape his squad in next month's transfer window. Should he take Forest back to the Premier League for the first time since 1999, then the people criticising him now would be well and truly silenced.

McLeish, admittedly, could do with things going his way once more. After crafting a reputation as a studious operator who gets the best out of players during his time at Motherwell, Hibernian, Rangers and then with Scotland, his stock has tumbled in recent seasons. If his time at Birmingham was hit and miss – he delivered promotion, a ninth-place Premier League finish and a League Cup but was also relegated twice – then the 11 months he spent at Villa were an unmitigated disaster.

It was always going to be a difficult transition moving from one side of the city to the other and there was the expected backlash from the Villa fans. His past, however, would have been quickly forgotten had he delivered success on the pitch. Instead what transpired was one of Villa's worst seasons for years. The club only narrowly avoided relegation but there would be no similar reprieve for the manager. He was sacked one day after the campaign ended.

McLeish could argue he was not helped by circumstances. Financial constraints meant a sizeable reduction in his wage budget, while Villa also lost several key players to injury and illness at different points of the season. He could have pled for a further year to turn it around with a bigger and healthier squad, but the club's directors elected not to give him that chance after just four home wins all season.

Six months later and McLeish is back in the game again. He claims to be re-energised after only his second break in management in 20 years, and a storied club like Forest, bursting with potential, offers him the perfect opportunity to restore his reputation.

It may be easy to sneer at McLeish following his recent travails but nine trophies in five years at Rangers – as well as a degree of success at Birmingham – more than demonstrate what he is capable of. Forest will be hoping he can deliver more of the same for them.