South Notts NFFC

Absolutely and after this there was an interview with Howard Webb about improving standards etc. Then they announced we'd be moving to semi-automated offsides. It's debatable whether the incidents are linked but it did very much seem at the time that we had rattled a few cages at the PGMOL/EPL. Then this was sort of backed up by Wolves calling on a vote for VAR to be scrapped. With the astronomical amounts of money now involved constant poor decisions have become too important for clubs to just sit by and accept. I think all reasonable football fans understand that some go for you and some don't, and maybe over the course of the season it'll 'even out' and you'll be where you should. But the standard of reffing in this country is so poor, in the Euros it was English refs getting VAR wrong. It needs addressing and the more of us (the other 14 clubs) that pull them up on it publicly, the better.

Expect to see this more and more from now on. I don't know whether you believe in such things but I and many other Forest fans last season genuinely believed the Premier League were out to do us. The club obviously thought so too and went to the unprecedented (and weird) lengths of bringing in Mark Clattenburg as refs advisor. Clattenburg of course being someone with a known dislike of Howard Webb. We'd clearly annoyed the league in some way and there was a very blatant shift in decisions we weren't getting. All of a sudden we went through a period of about 7 weeks where we had genuine amazement at not getting a penalty, or an opposition player not getting a red etc. All decisions that were looked at apparently by VAR and deemed acceptable. It obviously culminated in our defeat at Everton and that tweet. The tweet was probably ill-advised but the club had clearly got to the end of it's tether. Clattenburg then stepped down and conveniently the bad decisions not only stopped but we actually started getting some fairly questionable ones actually in our favour. I will always believe that there was something deep and underlying last season that wanted us gone. Now looking at your situation you have pissed the Premier League off big time and in my opinion will continue to suffer injustices like at Palace for a while. Then you look at what the 'Sky 6' are allowed to get away with off the field, and the continued decisions they get on it and I just feel the league is corrupt. It's a multi billion-quid money-making machine and unfortunately for us it's not Forest or Leicester that makes it the overseas brand it is, so it's easy to come after us and make it look like rules are being enforced.

Yeah 4 in 4 is a concern and goals were hardly flowing last season either. But going into the Liverpool game we'd had the most shots and shots on target in the entire league over the first 3 games so I'm just hoping they'll start to come soon. We're a lot more solid now at the back though so that does ease the pressure on the strikers a bit. The fact we wanted a striker in the summer was no secret and we were in for several who all for various different reasons ended up not happening. Chris Wood just does his thing and we know what we're getting, he'll get goals if given the service but for me he slows us down a lot. Taiwo Awoniyi looked almost unplayable at times over the last few years and has himself got a fairly handy scoring record for us but he seems both hugely out of favour and incredibly unreliable fitness-wise at the moment.

I suppose ultimately yes, but it would be good to see signs of gradual progress which I think we have seen in our 4 games so far. Our owner is highly ambitious and will be targeting a spot in Europe within the new few years, of that I'm absolutely certain. But amongst the fanbase I think anything between 12th and 16th will be completely fine as long as their are positive signs. What's worrying in football generally is how difficult it is to come up and compete for promoted clubs, especially ones that have been out the top flight for so long.

It could be argued that Brennan's goals and general contribution both got us up and then kept us up under Cooper.

We had similar with Brennan Johnson. It makes no sense.

He was defensive with us. We actually started the season relatively expansive but without the players to do it which culminated in being tonked at your place. After that under massive speculation he was about to be sacked he turned to a 4-3-3 and yeah essentially had the in the middle holding. It was a combination of Freuler, O'Brien, Kouyate, Mangala, Yates, Colback and then later Shelvey briefly...there's not a great deal of dynamism or creativity amongst that lot.

Is it anything to do with being Forest manager? I don't recall Martin O'Neill getting similarly bad treatment for Forest connections.

Cooper always struck me as a stubborn bugger with players, which sometimes is a good thing particularly with our (then) volatile ownership but it did mean that in many eyes some decisions just didn't make sense. Case in point when we came up we were crying out for some pace at the back and we signed a young defender called Loic Bade on loan. For some reason the lad never played a minute for us whilst Steve Cook and Scott McKenna, stalwarts from the promotion season were in every week. Bade since then has won the Europa League and been called up for France, so you're telling me that he wasn't better than Cook, but for whatever reason Cooper just took a dislike to him instantly. One thing he did do though which many managers wouldn't is admit that his system and style wasn't working, after we got thumped by your lot he changed to a much more solid 4-3-3. It wasn't pretty but it ground out enough results to keep us up.

Out of interest, in the 4 games you've had in the league, what has Cooper done to cause the mass vitriol? From the outside it seemed like some wanted him gone before a ball had been kicked or even before he'd signed!

Brennan's issue is most of the teams that play Spurs sit deep and Spurs themselves play so high up. On the ball Brennan is fairly average I'd say but he is absolutely rapid and knows where the goal is, but there's rarely the acres of space to run into he needs.

Because we got promoted basically out of the blue, about 2/3 of our promotion squad were either on loan or at the end of the contract and either too old or not good enough to make the step up. The number of signings got a bit out of hand but we had to make loads to survive. Some of them immediately went on loan to Olympiakos too which never got mentioned when we were the butt of national jokes. Unfortunately now pundits are so lazy that we still are labelled as the team that go out and make loads and loads of signings despite that mad summer being 2 years ago. Ipswich have realised this summer too that when you're out of this league for so long the numbers involved and the parameters for everything have completely changed since we were last here. A lot of Forest fans still can't get their head around some of our transfer fees for example, expecting a player costing £20m to be absolutely world class when at this level nowadays that just buys you average really. As you say, since the madness of 2022/23 we've settled into a much more measured transfer strategy, generally looking for players under 25 and often straight from South America so we're essentially trying to adopt the Brighton model. The 3 players you mention there were incredible value really, Hudson-Odoi for £3m, Elanga for £15m and Murillo for around £12m is mental. If we sold all 3 in January they'd probably fetch £150m combined.

I'm not quite sure who Leicester fans thought they would attract but for you at the moment (newly promoted but potentially back in the Championship next year) he is an ideal appointment.

Without want to be facetious, I wonder how that stats compare with your team that season. I'd imagine in many of the categories you'd look better but ultimately there's only one stat that matters.

Forest fan here in peace. Just thought I'd come in and offer my two penneth on Steve Cooper based on the 2 and a bit years he was here. You are absolutely right in that when we came up we basically gave up the ball and played on the counter with Brennan Johnson. It wasn't pretty to watch and at times we looked like a lower league team that had been parachuted in to the Prem. Cooper did used to say though that it wasn't how he wanted to play but needs must, which does show an adaptability rarely seen in managers who have Plan A and that's it as it's "their philosophy". We also switched from the 3-4-3 that we were promoted with (had at your place in the 4-0) to a 4-3-3 which made us much more solid. So you'll have a manager that is prepared to change it up if it's not working. He also had a ridiculous number of players come in to the club, the majority of which he'd have had no say in whatsoever and had to mould together a team capable of staying up. We also had an injury crisis that was so bad it called for an investigation into the club's medical department. One thing he obviously had at Forest with the fans was credit in the bank after miraculously taking us up. Cooper was brilliant at building a relationship with fans, he knows exactly what to say and when to say it and he was so popular at the CG that some fans would've preferred to go back to the Championship with him then stay up with someone else. It was reported that he was actually going to be sacked after the 4-0 game at yours but fan support saved him. He won't have that at Leicester so my fear is if it starts badly it could be tough to turn around. So to sum up I'd say that Forest fans generally are more concerned you could stay up now you have Cooper which says a lot but be prepared to suffer sometimes in games to get results.