The Official Nottingham Forest 🌳 Supporters Thread

You would wonder just what Cooper is going to do with all these new player’s. Who will make his first choice eleven, how will he engender a good atmosphere in the squad and will he alter his normal tactical approach? Such a large influx of new players at the same time can be disruptive to the team rather than beneficial.

We let 17 players go. That’s not including the 5 loanees who were crucial to our promotion that returned to their parent clubs. We had to almost start from scratch.

He’s done alright. Not scoring any goals will be a problem though…

That will come once (or if) the new players gel. I don’t expect miracles overnight. We need 10-15 goals from one of the strikers (Awoniyi / Dennis) and the likes of Gibbs White, Johnson, Lingard to chip in with a few of their own. Get that much, and we’ll be fine.

I think we should swiftly skip over tonight’s result. I predicted 5-0 to City pre-match and it panned out similarly. Could be critical of Cooper for playing a midfielder at centre half and no conventional striker again, but I don’t think it would have mattered. City and Haaland in particular are on a different level. They’ll do that to much bigger clubs than us this season.

On to Bournemouth where Cooper & Co will actually be judged. And not on tonight.

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The season starts now

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Fact :+1:

We took 4 points from August which is 2 more than I forecast us taking.

A win at the weekend would make it a fantastic start. Happy enough so far, the only difference between us and Spurs was Harry Kane and the differnce between us and City was Haaland and Alvarez.
I think we need a dedicated striker starting and for me that should be Dinny, strikes me as the most natural finisher

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Only 3 signings today. And one straight out on loan. Kinda disappointing really

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Nottingham Forest team bus

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Inside Nottingham Forest’s crazy transfer window: The most prolific in PL history

Daniel Taylor

Sep 2, 2022

As the clock ticked down on the transfer window, it was probably no surprise to find Nottingham Forest in the thick of it, just where they like to be.

The previous night, they had found out the hard way that the Premier League can be a harsh, unforgiving place for a club that is trying to acclimatise to the top level.

Now, 24 hours after a 6-0 defeat to Manchester City, they were back in the market for new players and it was probably just inevitable that, by the end of the night, they would complete the most extensive transfer blitz there has ever been in England’s top division. The previous record was set by Crystal Palace with 18 signings in 2013. And Forest, being Forest, they seemed intent on smashing it.

First there was Willy Boly’s signing from Wolves. Josh Bowler arrived from Blackpool and will go on loan to Olympiacos. Oh, and Loic Bade signed on loan from Rennes. These were the 19th, 20th and 21st signings of Forest’s summer. Michy Batshuayi’s proposed move from Chelsea fell through at the last minute, but a deal is also in place for Serge Aurier, the former Tottenham Hotspur defender who is currently a free agent. Aurier will be number 22.

Forty-three years since making Trevor Francis the first £1million footballer, Forest have spent more on transfer fees in one window than they had previously throughout their entire 157-year history. They have spent more this summer — upwards of £150million — than Barcelona, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain. A new signing has arrived, on average, every four days. In 30 years of the Premier League, there has never been another club to spend so dramatically in such a short space of time.

It has been breathtaking, spectacular, daring, unorthodox, bold, exciting, unprecedented and slightly unsettling all at once.

It has also polarised opinion and changed the way, undoubtedly, that Forest are going to be viewed this season.

Their critics say it is too much and that it is unreasonable to expect a manager, even one with Steve Cooper’s brilliance, to make sense of it all and maintain the spirit of togetherness that helped Forest win promotion in the first place. How, they ask, will he keep everyone happy? What if it all backfires?


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GO DEEPER
Transfer window verdict: Best, worst and most surprising signings of the summer

Just don’t expect many Forest supporters to follow that line of argument when, to put it into context, this time last year the team had one point from their first five Championship games.

They lost the next one, too. And the one after that. Forest spent 35 days at the bottom of the league. They went out of the EFL Cup in a 4-0 home defeat to Wolves. The curtains twitched, the wind howled.

Standing on the pitch at Wembley after Forest had beaten Huddersfield Town in the Championship play-off final, the club’s longest-serving player, Joe Worrall, succinctly pointed out that, until the appointment of Cooper, it had been “shite”.

But Worrall could have gone further back. He could have mentioned the Fawaz al Hasawi era and the tragicomedy of what became known as the Carry on Kuwait years. He could have mentioned the relegation to League One under Nigel Doughty, the previous owner. Or what about the last time the club were promoted, in 1998, and came up with the rather unique strategy that it was a good time to flog some of their better players?

Pierre van Hooijdonk, you may recall, was so miffed he went on strike and Forest were dead certs for relegation before the leaves had started dropping from the trees.

So, yes, 21 is an extraordinary number and, of course, it is a subject of fascination. Of course it has got people talking and there are legitimate questions about how Cooper will handle it.

But it has also been the summer when Evangelos Marinakis, Forest’s owner, has introduced himself properly to the Premier League and a wider audience has started to learn about the way this famous old club operates nowadays.

Marinakis has overseen a huge outlay this transfer window (Photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)

Marinakis gives the impression he likes his new surroundings. His stock has never been higher with the club’s supporters and, after all their years in Nowhereville, it is easy to understand why they are just grateful that Forest are showing proper ambition. Every game is sold out well in advance. Every away end is filled. No other ground in the top division creates a louder din, judging by the evidence so far this season.

It is just a pity, perhaps, that neither Netflix nor Amazon appear to have realised yet that a fly-on-the-wall documentary at the City Ground would be television gold.


The first six

Not everything has gone the way Forest intended, of course.

When Omar Richards signed from Bayern Munich for £8.5million in the second week of July, Forest congratulated themselves on a shrewd piece of business and expected him to start the season as their left-sided wing-back.

Then, in his first week of training, Richards reported he had a small lump on his leg. It was tender. He went for a scan and that was the moment it became clear he had a hairline fracture that somehow had not been picked up by his medical examination.

It was a potential embarrassment — imagine the “Forest sign Broken-Leg Player” headlines if it had come out at the time — and, understandably, there was an inquest behind the scenes. Forest would not have signed the 24-year-old if they had been aware he was potentially out for three months. Marinakis was livid. There was even talk that Forest might go back to Bayern to try to rearrange the structure of the payments.

It also left Forest needing a replacement wing-back and the club were acutely aware that, if the news came out, it might bump up the price for the players they had identified. One was Harry Toffolo of Huddersfield and the other was Alex Moreno of Real Betis.

A plan was put in place to keep everything hush-hush. On Forest’s Twitter account, they even included a training-ground picture of Richards – “pre-season preparations continue” – ahead of a friendly against Hertha Berlin at Burton Albion’s ground.

On matchday, the sense of intrigue went up another level as Richards was named on Forest’s website among their substitutes. The first rumours of his injury had started to surface on social media and the fans were relieved to find out he was in the squad. A Twitter hate mob turned on the poor bloke who had dared to put out he had heard there was bad news. “I’m enjoying all the stick,” he responded. “However, despite what some of you may think, I did not make up a rumour. I was genuinely told the information from what is usually a very trustworthy source.”

It was a remarkable sequence of events. But there was a method to the madness. The story never properly got out and Toffolo, in his final year of contract at Huddersfield, was signed for a cut-price £2.5million in the £10million double deal that saw Lewis O’Brien move the same way. Mission accomplished.

By that stage, Forest had already signed two centre-backs, Moussa Niakhate and Giulian Biancone, as well as bringing in Neco Williams from Liverpool to take over as the team’s right-sided wing-back.

Niakhate had been the captain of Mainz. Biancone cost £5million from Troyes and had been on Forest’s radar for a year. Williams was another long-term target and, though he was expensive at £17million, the Wales international was a natural fit for Cooper’s preferred 3-4-2-1 system.

A plan was in place to assemble a squad with two players for each position. And, right from the start, Marinakis made it clear in his conversations with Cooper he was willing to spend upwards of £100million.

Cooper was invited to Athens in mid-June to spend time with the owner and discuss what was needed for Forest’s first season in England’s top division for almost a quarter of a century. The manager was with his family and had time to relax by the pool. But his agent was there, too, and it was an opportunity to start the negotiations about rewarding him with a new contract.

Cooper was dismayed on his return to Nottingham to find that details of his contract talks had been leaked to the media and there were some tense exchanges when the person who was suspected of being responsible was asked to explain himself. The manager’s relationship with the relevant person is said to remain fragile.

Otherwise, however, the mood was upbeat. Nottingham, the city, was on a high. Brennan Johnson had signed a new contract and arrangements were being made to sign Taiwo Awoniyi in a club-record £17.2million deal from Union Berlin.

Dean Henderson arrived the following week and, in the space of nine days, Forest brought in players from Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Liverpool.

Henderson arrived from United to replace Samba (Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

The expectation was that Cooper’s new contract would follow but, two months on, nothing has materialised. Is that a concern? Well, yes, to a degree, when his achievements at Forest last season meant Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp looked vaguely embarrassed to be named the League Managers’ Association manager of the year.

Everyone inside the club seems quite relaxed about it, though, and Cooper could never argue that Forest have not backed him in the transfer market.

One of his recent news conferences was interrupted by the noise of a plane going over the stadium. Cooper peered towards the sky. “That’s another player now coming to us,” he told the assembled media, who presumably knew it was a joke.

  1. Taiwo Awoniyi – Union Berlin, £17.2million (June 25)
  2. Dean HendersonManchester United, loan (July 2)
  3. Giulian Biancone – Troyes, £5million (July 3)
  4. Moussa Niakhate, Mainz (July 6)
  5. Omar Richards — Bayern Munich, £8.5million (July 10)
  6. Neco Williams – Liverpool, £17million (July 11)

Seven to 14
At 9.45am on the morning after promotion, an email went out from Forest to all the journalists on their database. Forest were back in the big time. And that made them big news again.

“Can we please ask that you follow Nottingham Forest executive Miltiadis Marinakis on Twitter please?” it read. “Miltiadis has, alongside Steve Cooper, Dane Murphy, and his own father, been instrumental in bringing top-flight football back to the City Ground for the first time in 23 years.”

Miltiadis is the owner’s son and has a PR man, Chris Wheatley, who sits beside him in the directors’ box and works to generate favourable publicity on his behalf.

Videos are posted from Miltiadis’ Twitter account after good results. He even posted the announcement of Jesse Lingard, the star signing of Forest’s summer, before the club had put out the news. Marinakis Jr’s popularity has risen steadily in this era when fans are fixated on transfer news and social-media snippets.

At the age of 23, it is also increasingly evident that Miltos, as friends call him, is now entrusted to deal with agents and make key decisions to shape Forest’s future. He likes to be part of the game, to be introduced, to put his surname to good effect and associate with powerful agents such as Jonathan Barnett and Jorge Mendes.

Miltiadis was the go-to man for Brentford when they were trying to sign Johnson in January and — his biggest success to date — he spent a lot of time with Lingard, who speaks a bit of Greek because his brother lives there.

Miltiadis is the oldest of Marinakis’ four children and his only son, and it is tempting to think the long-term plan is that one day he will take over the family empire.

“His father’s logic is to let the kid get involved and get evolved,” says one observer with knowledge of the family. “The kid’s a maverick. No one can know where it will land or what the impact will be. But I’m hearing good things, taking into consideration his age and inexperience. He’s quite a clever kid. He learns fast. He will certainly be wrong numerous times but the important thing is not to repeat the same mistakes.”

The same could apply to other departments at the City Ground when, by their own admission, Forest have had to undertake a crash course in what is needed on and off the pitch to make a decent fist of being a Premier League club.

Their inexperience at this level explains, in part, why Lee Charnley, previously one of Mike Ashley’s close allies at Newcastle United, has been hired on a consultancy basis to help make the transition as smooth as possible.

Charnley’s involvement is a surprise in one sense given that Forest’s chairman, Nicholas Randall, was part of Kevin Keegan’s legal team when he successfully sued Newcastle, on Ashley’s watch, for constructive dismissal in 2010. Charnley, who was called to give evidence, was largely unpopular with Newcastle’s fans and Forest, it is understood, decided it would be better not to publicise his involvement this summer.

The counterargument is that there is a certain amount of logic to involve Charnley given that he is an experienced administrator, with 22 years at St James’ Park, when that is something Forest need at this level: experience.

Other changes have also been made, and continue to be made, and it is not just in the dressing room where there has been a recurring theme of ins and outs.

Within a few days of those euphoric scenes at Wembley, Forest had appointed Tom Rawlings, the head of media at Warwickshire County Cricket Club, to take over from Matt Appleby, who held the same role at the City Ground.

Rawlings, a Forest fan, stayed in the job only seven weeks and Wheatley duly announced on social media that he had taken over. But Forest have brought in Simon Felstein, formerly the director of communications at Tottenham Hotspur, on a short-term consultancy basis to provide some expertise and experience. Felstein is helping the club find another head of media and an announcement should be made soon. It will be their fourth person in this role since promotion.

Why does all this matter?

Well, if there is one criticism that could be levelled at Forest it is that they have not always put out the right messages when the media’s scrutiny is fixed on the club more intensely than any other time in the 21st century.

Perhaps Forest could have done more to explain they are targeting players who, for the most part, will go up in value and that they are putting in place what could be the core of the team for a number of years.

They could have put out the message that only seven of their new signings are over the age of 28 and, contrary to the way it has been reported in some places, this is not a money-no-object spending spree.

Amadou Onana, Everton’s midfield signing, was prominent in Forest’s thinking, to cite just one example, until it became clear he would cost £32million from Lille. A deal for Keinan Davis of Aston Villa never happened because of the £15million asking price. Forest lost out to Crystal Palace for Cheick Doucoure. Ibrahim Sangare, of PSV Eindhoven, was out of reach.

More than anything, perhaps Forest ought to have reacted more swiftly and authoritatively to all the myth-making about Lingard’s reputed £200,000-a-week wages and a backlash that did no good for the club or the player himself. Because something changed when Forest nipped in front of West Ham to snap up the former Manchester United player on a free transfer. Attitudes hardened. Suddenly, people started looking at Forest through suspicious eyes, wondering how a newly promoted club could afford such mind-boggling wages.

It was all based on a mistruth, yet Forest let the story develop and that was the deal that crystallised the club’s modern reputation as wild, reckless spenders.

The truth is a lot more nuanced and Forest are probably entitled to be dismayed by the lack of basic research that, at times, has helped shape the narrative that Cooper might need two dressing rooms to fit all these players.

For starters, it is worth reiterating that half of Forest’s first-choice XI last season — Keinan Davis, Djed Spence, James Garner, Philip Zinckernagel and Max Lowe — were on loan.

Brice Samba decided within a week of winning promotion that he wanted to leave. Ethan Horvarth, his deputy, was not on the same level and Forest wanted to upgrade. So Horvath, needing regular games to fix his place in the United States’ World Cup plans, went on loan to Luton Town and that meant Forest needed two new goalkeepers.

Lewis Grabban, meanwhile, was among the list of Forest players who had reached the end of their contracts. Grabban was the club captain and their leading scorer in three of the last four seasons. Forest wanted to bring down his wages and Grabban, to Cooper’s disappointment, preferred to move to a club in Saudi Arabia.

Captain Grabban was out of contract (Photo: Michael Steele/Getty Images)

There was also a considerable list of players who were not deemed good enough, or experienced enough, for the Championship, so were never realistically going to figure in the Premier League. In total, Forest have sold, released or loaned out 22 players with first-team experience.

As for Lingard, the reality is he is on £110,000 a week, with a number of performance-related bonuses tied into his contract. It still makes him the highest-paid player in Forest’s history but, as The Athletic has previously explained, the club’s transfer business this summer complies with financial fair-play regulations.

What tends to be overlooked is that Forest would be in the bottom three if a league table was put together based on the clubs’ wage bills. They would also be near the bottom in a league table showing the combined worth of each Premier League squad.

“I’m not suggesting we have got everything right – far from it,” Randall told Bloomberg last week. “But to suggest we are reckless or foolhardy is nonsense.”

  1. Wayne Hennessey, Burnley, undisclosed (July 15)
  2. Brandon Aguilera, LD Alajuelense, undisclosed (July 17)
    9 and 10) Harry Toffolo and Lewis O’Brien, Huddersfield, £10million (July 20)
  3. Jesse Lingard, free agent (July 21)
  4. Orel Mangala, Stuttgart, £12.75million (July 31)
  5. Cheikhou Kouyate, free agent (August 13)

The final blitz

If you had seen the way Orel Mangala introduced himself to the Premier League with a man-of-the-match performance at Everton, it would probably be easier to understand why Forest were so keen to add him to their payroll.

Dean Henderson had a difficult night against City but, overall, his performances have quickly made up for Samba’s departure. Lewis O’Brien has shown he can make the step up from the Championship. Lingard is getting fitter and more effective.

Yet Cooper’s main target was always Morgan Gibbs-White and that deal shows again how Forest have advanced since the days when the common complaint among their supporters was that Olympiacos, Marinakis’ Greek club, would always be his main focus.

When Jorge Mendes has previously been involved in deals for Forest they have tended to involve some of the players who could be described, charitably, as not being among his stellar clients.

As one person behind the scenes once declared: “The super-agent has taken the piss out of Forest.”

Now, though, Mendes was working partly on Forest’s behalf to put in place the chain of events at Wolves, the club where he holds such influence, to make the deal happen. Marinakis held talks directly with his counterparts at Wolves (apart from a few days when Olympiacos were knocked out of the Champions League and everyone knew it was better not to disturb him) and, finally, Cooper got his man.

Then, as Gibbs-White made his home debut against Tottenham Hotspur last weekend, Ronan Lodi was having his first look at the City Ground on a season-long loan from Atletico Madrid, with the option to make it a £25.6million deal next year. Mendes was involved again and suddenly Forest had a Brazil international who had been on Pep Guardiola’s wishlist for City a few weeks earlier.

“This signing,” one Forest fan wrote on Twitter, “is for everyone who has experienced Gomis, Djebbour, Akpom, Macheda, Lica, Dumitru, Teixera, Tshibola, Kapino, Dejagah, Hefele, Soudani, Bonatini, Tachtsidis, Muric, Bong, Jenkinson, Da Costa, Diakhaby, Mir, Diallo, Bachirou, Freeman, Arter, Guerrero, Ioannou and more.”

Marinakis, to his credit, had recognised it was not working with Forest’s previous recruitment model and hired Dane Murphy, formerly Barnsley’s chief executive, at the start of last season to run the club in a more methodical way. Murphy, in turn, identified Cooper to replace Chris Hughton as manager and put in place a new recruitment team that would place extra emphasis on data and analytics. The idea was to bring down the average age of the squad, make better use of the French and German markets and create a vibrant, exciting team.

Murphy, a 36-year-old who had previously worked in recruitment for New York Cosmos, Real Salt Lake and DC United, finished the season picking up an award as the Championship’s CEO of the year and has been integral to Forest’s success.

At other times, it becomes a lot more convoluted because of the number of people who are involved. Marinakis has a direct line into the sport’s leading agents. Ioannis Vrentzos is now Olympiacos’ managing director but still involved, from time to time, at Forest. Christian Karembeu, Olympiacos’ sporting director, has started to appear at Forest matches. There are others on the fringes with their own targets and opinions. The task of finding and signing players is like a sport itself.

One story in agent circles involves one of the game’s fixers, representing a major agency, ringing Marinakis Jr to discuss a player. The owner’s son is said to have asked who was on the line before replying, “Thank you, but I talk directly to (the top person at the agency)” and hanging up. Perhaps it is apocryphal, but it raises a smile because it is reminiscent of the way it can be at Forest sometimes.

As for Marinakis Sr, he is not just ambitious, he can be demanding and mercurial and there are times when that makes it a considerable challenge inside the club to manage expectations. Internally, the biggest fear is that Marinakis wants a top-six finish when others at the club have more realistic aims.

Maybe it could be described as one of Marinakis’ strengths: that he cannot tolerate mediocrity and is absolutely determined to change the club’s mindset. He has already achieved that to some degree. It can, however, make it a stressful and pressurised environment for the people on the ground. “We are aiming to rewrite history and win more trophies,” he announced on the day after promotion. “This is only the beginning.”

Those heightened expectations explain why Forest are in the unusual position of not having a shirt sponsor. One company is said to have offered £5.5million. Forest are also said to have received a £1million offer for sleeve sponsorship. Marinakis, however, is adamant they can attract better deals and that Forest — two-time European Cup winners — have the status and history to expect to get their way.

The word among some Premier League clubs is that Forest will be voting with the “Big Six” this season.

It has also become clear that some of the goodwill that was felt towards Forest in the warm afterglow of promotion has made way for something that, in a few places, is bordering on resentment.

A common complaint relates to Forest’s habit of bidding on multiple players, or offering those players big salaries, but then moving on to new targets. The other clubs who want the same players then find that the price has gone up, or that they have to pay higher wages because that was the proposal Forest put on the table.

“They are distorting the market,” says the chief executive of one Premier League club. “But what can we do?”

The counterargument is that every club is run with self-interest. Are these legitimate complaints? Or is it sour grapes now it has become clear Forest, jostling for position at football’s top table, are willing at times to use their elbows? The truth is probably somewhere in between.

In the current climate, Forest should probably steel themselves for some gripes about how their relationship with Olympiacos allows them to juggle their finances and move players back and forth between the two clubs. Bowler is the latest. The same applies to Hwang Ui-jo, a 30-year-old Bordeaux striker who was Forest’s 17th signing and went straight on loan to their sister club. Almost certainly, Gustavo Scarpa, who has signed a pre-contract agreement, will go the same way when he leaves Palmeiras of Brazil in December.

It is all within the rules and Olympiacos, in the process, get the benefit of players who have effectively cost them nothing but their salaries. It is easy, nonetheless, to understand why some clubs do not like it. Many Forest fans also feel uneasy about it, too.

Arsenal, meanwhile, were alarmed to find out that Forest could, in theory, pay up to £42.5million for Gibbs-White because of all the potential add-ons (realistically, it will never get that high and, guaranteed, it is £25million). Why did it bother Arsenal so much? Because they wanted Neto, another Wolves player, and feared it would bump up his price.

Ultimately, though, the bottom line is that Forest have had three months to build a squad that can handle playing in the most demanding league in the world. They had to face City, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham and a resurgent Newcastle in the first month. And now, Cooper can feel increasingly confident he has an elite squad that can be competitive at this level.

Remo Freuler’s signing from Atalanta has added a player with Champions League experience. Emmanuel Dennis arrived from Watford with a proven record of scoring goals in the top league, and Neil Maupay was close to joining from Brighton until he announced he wanted more time to weigh up his decision. Forest moved on to Plan B — Bade, Bowler, Boly and, briefly, Batshuayi. It was just a surprise Benzema wasn’t on the list.

Yes, there are imperfections and Forest’s followers will have to get used to the jokes and the cynicism of people who remember newly promoted Fulham spent a net £102million in the summer of 2018 and still dropped straight back into the Championship. Even Specsavers, via their official Twitter account, queried Gibbs-White’s transfer fee.

Overall, though, this is not the cliche of “doing a Fulham”. It is Forest doing a Forest. Fifty-five players have worn the club’s colours since the start of last season. More than 70 signings arrived on loans or permanent transfers in their first seven transfer windows of the Greek era. Too many were paid extraordinarily high wages for extraordinarily low input. Another mind-boggling detail from Forest’s summer: promotion meant Harry Arter, their absent midfielder, earned a contract extension and an increase to his previous salary, thought to be close to £40,000 a week. His last game for the club was 20 months ago.

The difference now is that Forest are targeting better and more expensive additions and putting together a squad that is chalk and cheese with what went before.

This is the club, lest it be forgotten, where the mood was so mutinous this time last year David Johnson took aim at the board of directors — Vrentzos, Randall and TalkSPORT presenter Jonny Owen — in his role as a popular ex-player, a home-and-away follower of the team and the father of Brennan.

This club we see now, outspending some of Europe’s big-hitters, had not been higher than 14th in the Championship for over a year. The previous season, only two other clubs in the entire EFL — Derby County and Southend United — had scored fewer goals.

“Just so angry and disappointed how this club is run,” Johnson wrote, to widespread support, on Twitter. “It’s embarrassing (the whole board should have gone), they are a disgrace.”

Fast-forward a year and, at the first home game of the season, a Forest fan could be seen on television, arms above his head, palms out, genuflecting towards Marinakis in the directors’ box.

“While we were giddy with excitement about heading to Manchester City this week, Derby were facing Grimsby in the Papa Johns Trophy,” says David Marples, the Forest fan, writer and author of a new book, Reds & Rams, charting Forest’s historic rivalry with Derby. “The Rams have fallen through the trapdoor while Forest have taken the super-express elevator reminiscent of the one used by Willy Wonka — the one that blows through the glass roof at the end of the film.”

It is a club, in the author’s words, that is “competing now at stratospheric levels rather than losing, as Forest once did, to Woking in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy”.

Then, at 11pm, on the first night of September, 2022, the transfer window was declared shut. The floodlights were on at the City Ground and it was tempting to imagine a number of frazzled club executives making their way home, zombie-like, to catch up on some sleep.

“We haven’t spoken about Nottingham Forest for a while,” the presenter on Sky Sports asked midway through a hectic night. “They must be up to 50 signings by now, surely?” Not quite, but there’s still January.

  1. Emmanuel Dennis, Watford, £20million (August 13)
  2. Remo Freuler, Atalanta, £7.5million (August 14)
  3. Morgan Gibbs-White, Wolves, £25million (August 19)
  4. Hwang Ui-jo, Bordeaux (August 26)
  5. Renan Lodi, Atletico Madrid, loan (August 28)
  6. Willy Boly, Wolves, £4.65million (September 1)
  7. Josh Bowler, Blackpool, £2million (September 1)
  8. Loic Bade, Rennes, loan (September 1)
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Can I just say, and it’s probably more a reflection on my lack of interest in professional football over the last few years, but other than Dean Henderson, I have never heard of a single player we have just signed.
And yet I love them all, even the social media lad, Jingz.

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2 changes for the famous club in the game of the day

Boom 1-0. Kouyate heads in from a corner. Looked like he was gonna have to go off injured earlier

Penalty

Takes VAR over 5 minutes to award the most blatant penalty for handball in the history of football. Brennan says no worries and bashes into the top corner, 2-0 to the Forest

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Fucks sake

Jesus fucking Christ