Steve Cooper - New Manager

[Ric Flair]

1 hour ago, Dahnsouff said:

According to The Athletic, Potter wanted to bring in his backroom team that went with him to Chelsea, which would have offset some of the compensation received for Enzo.

I read this but having done the research the majority of them left when Potter did (Reid, Hamberg etc).

 

I can only presume that like Potter they are still being paid by Chelsea until they regain employment. For coaches and assistants, taking another job on a vast wage decrease to what they got at Chelsea might be harder to immediately accept than a manager who knows they're good for several more jobs on multiple million a year.

 

 

[moore_94]

Rob Page leaving the Wales job today

 

I wonder if that played into us having to drop waiting around for Potter and get Cooper in quickly before he got that job

Edited 21 June by moore_94

[Dahnsouff]

1 minute ago, Ric Flair said:

I read this but having done the research the majority of them left when Potter did (Reid, Hamberg etc).

 

I can only presume that like Potter they are still being paid by Chelsea until they regain employment. For coaches and assistants, taking another job on a vast wage decrease to what they got at Chelsea might be harder to immediately accept than a manager who knows they're good for several more jobs on multiple million a year.

 

 

Yes, even if they are no longer employed by Chelsea, we would probably need to offer large salaries than we would if they did not have their golden shakes still in play.

[Seventyseven]

1 hour ago, Claudio Fannieri said:

The more I read and research about Steve Cooper the happier I feel about the appointment. I really hope in his time away from the game he has taken stock of good and bad from his time at Forest and will come to us a better Manager with a point to prove, which can be a really plus for us. 
 

He will get my 100% support and I absolute want him to be a massive success at the club, what I really want to see is some stability and a Manager who is here for a period of time as this will be our 4th Manager in the last 18 months. 

Daniel Taylor is very cosy with Steve Cooper and has a dislike of their board so will tone articles in this manner (any inside info out of forest goes to John Percy rather than Taylor). 
 

I mean what manager doesn’t look to improve? And he was hardly batting away jobs too good to turn down. 

[The Doctor]

20 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Disagree. The manager asap, especially as a backroom team needed building/negotiating for.

Squad building cost go into the next period of financial reckoning, so they are not related.

given there'd be contract negotiations for his backroom staff, and the next financial period starts in 10 days, im not buying that. surely Potter wasn't insistent on having the coaches fully set up by 30th June?

[Dahnsouff]

Just now, The Doctor said:

given there'd be contract negotiations for his backroom staff, and the next financial period starts in 10 days, im not buying that. surely Potter wasn't insistent on having the coaches fully set up by 30th June?

Maybe, just felt we could get a manager and staff (cheaper the better) largely in place before the period changes, then focus on players once they were in place, but maybe I am just not multi-tasking enough!! 

[The Doctor]

7 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Maybe, just felt we could get a manager and staff (cheaper the better) largely in place before the period changes, then focus on players once they were in place, but maybe I am just not multi-tasking enough!! 

right, but we still could have had them all but officially in place before the period change with potters staff. if it's to do with wages, contract starts 1st of July so goes into a different period. if it's compensation, then again line things up to go through officially on 1st of July, like we'll almost certainly be doing with Fatawu and any other signings we've got set up. I don't see any way of reading it being about potters backroom staff without the take home being that we wanted the cheapest option available 

[Groby_Blue]

2 hours ago, Seventyseven said:

Much is made of the “appalling board’.

 

they financed the promotion season and financed them staying in the league. 
 

They’ve also massively improved the club off the pitch and have plans for a ground improvements/new ground and training ground. 
 

nothing has ever suggested they interfere with team selections etc and it perhaps isn’t unreasonable the board wanted a better return than what they were getting. 
 

a huge bit of luck and forests home seige mentality kept them up first season and he was taking them down second season. Cooper isn’t getting that level of support from our fans. 
 

I appreciate people will try to kid themselves it’s a good appointment but it really isn’t. It’s simply the cheap option. 

The Yin 

 

2 hours ago, Saxondale said:

This is the point. He managed to turn an utterly dreadful, relegation-fodder Forest, full of malaise - who has been this way for years - into a team that ultimately got promoted. He then kept them up for a season, despite working for a lunatic crime lord, whose son wanted to play Football Manager and went round Europe signing wastemen.

 

These are huge achievements, and demonstrate that he can get good results against the odds and working in difficult circumstances. 

And the Yang 

Edited 21 June by Groby_Blue

[Richmondfox]

3 hours ago, honeybradger said:

I genuinely think Mavidi, Vardy and Fatawu will be a lethal front three in the PL in a more counter attacking team. Whenever we played a more open team Mavididi in particular would go up a gear.

 

Towards the end of Forest's first season in the PL Cooper had Forest playing some decent counter attacking football and they got decent results off some tough fixtures.

They are both fast and tricky wingers who would benefit from the ball played into space quickly to run at the defence.  They don’t need to be receiving the ball on the halfway line with backs to goal with no overlapping runner. Hopefully we will see this with Ricardo, JJ or VK. 

 

When JJ came on against Norwich on the wing and the shackles appeared to be off, he looked like a different player. 

[ClaphamFox]

2 hours ago, The Doctor said:

so we just straight up cheaped out then. Bodes well for the summer given the squad building needed...

 

Moyes is done. Maybe he goes back into management if Clarke gets the boot from Scotland after this euros, but club management no chance.

The Athletic article makes it very clear that cost was the main reason we didn't get either Corberan or Potter. I was hoping this wouldn't be the case, but it seems to be the reality of the situation. Oh well - let's hope Cooper is one of those appointments that is initially misjudged by the fans before he goes on to prove everybody wrong...

[Nolucklcfc]

Interesting that big Wes really likes him as well. He is very well respected in the game that’s for sure. I think he will convince wilf to sign on as well 

[oxtonfox]

I must admit that I felt initially with not getting Potter or Corberan and ending up with Cooper reminded me of a situation back in my younger days at a nightclub in Southampton.

I was getting on well with a girl, proper stunner, way more attractive than I thought I could handle.

I then ended up asking her less attractive mate out. She agreed and we dated for a while. What might have been eh? 

 

Steve Cooper is who we have. He’s keen, which is great, back him and let’s see how it goes! 

[ChrisFilter]

Whilst I was initially underwhelmed, I'm now coming around to Cooper.

 

He's only 44 (tough paper round, mind) and has seen success in every job he's had. He has Prem experience, albeit limited, and he's proven to be adaptable. Yes, horrible football at Forest, but you have to scrap at that end of the table.

 

I think he'll do alright for us. 

[pazzerfox]

I'm really pleased we chose Cooper.  He could really bring the unity back, that we so drastically needed towards the end of Rodgers' tenure.

[Groby_Blue]

Rather than have a jerk of the knee as an awful lot of people seem to have done, I've been doing a bit of reading up on our Coops and I like what I see. 

 

I don't think he'll be the distaster and inst-relegation bringer that some are making him out to be. 

 

If he can get the players on board, and history suggests he'll be able to do that fairly easily, that will be half the battle towards safety. 

 

What he will need though is 30k supporters behind him and the team screaming them on this season. 

 

Spurs, Fulham and Villa aren't going to be the easiest start to the month and I can see people screaming for his head if we come out of August without any points. 

 

But he needs a chance and we need to give him one. He seems a very decent guy and I wish him all the best. 

[Raj]

Ive heard people at  Forest  still rate him so its good for me.

[Seventyseven]

4 hours ago, Lesta Legend said:

The suggestion that there are a lot of Forest fans that didn’t like him is a nonsense. He is looked at like Pearson, most Leicester fans fondly remember Pearson with the odd weirdo. Cooper turned the club around in spite of the Chairman. He isn’t the most inspiring option, I get that but it’s unjustified to right him off his record is respectable.

In spite of their chairman bankrolling promotion? And then bankrolling them to stay up? Real fairytale stuff eh! 
 

im sure people rewrite things to suit their agenda! 

[Haywood_6]

16 minutes ago, Raj said:

Ive heard people at  Forest  still rate him so its good for me.

I think the majority of Forest fans think he'll do well with us 

[SecretPro]

I've been on the Forest Forum (and since had a wash)

 

Their main Cooper thread on there is titled:

 

Steve Cooper will always be the MAN!

 

its 721 pages.

 

They still love him for what he did for them and always will.

 

Very much Pearson vibes.

[STUHILL]

The key strength is the fact he has been in a relegation battle very recently and succeeded. 

That is exactly what we will need this season with the points deduction.

A few battling performances early on, and I can see him getting a lot of the fanbase on board. 

 

[inckley fox]

15 hours ago, Guest said:

Deliberately so, yes. I'm not equating Billy Sharp's current ability as a player to Steve Cooper's as a manager. Replace his name with Fabio Silva or any other very average but semi-plausible Premier League striker if it makes more sense to you.

 

My point is I think the "argument" you proposed is not one that makes any sense because I don't see why having a list of available and willing managers should be an prerequisite to expressing disappointment with getting Cooper. I think it's a middling-to-underwhelming appointment because as a footballer supporter I've watched his teams play, and yet I don't have a little black book of plausible alternatives to hand because I'm not a football agent or well-connected journalist. Similarly, when Rodgers was stinking the place out I thought it was pretty reasonable for people to say he needed sacking without necessarily being able to name a replacement.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your argument is more or less 'it's easier for a fan to judge the merits of a manager than it is to say whether the appointment itself is any good, because we can see with our own eyes whether we like his football, but we don't know who the other candidates were, nor the criteria'.

 

That's fair, but I think you can add several reasonable points to this. Firstly, that it's possible for us to look at the positives with this guy. His first-season impact is generally very good (I liked watching his Swansea side, for instance), and while things slip in his second year, it's still important to give some context: his second season saw him in the play-offs with Swansea, and stay up with a Forest side in a staggering degree of flux. While I'd understand people looking at his final days with Forest and saying 'I don't want that here', it's as hard to blame him for the chaos at that club as it is to say that Potter or Poch were fully responsible for their shaky starts at Chelsea. I'd also add that Maresca's inexperience and relative youth were often given as grounds for believing that he might get better, and yet Cooper was younger than him when he hit all of these troughs in his career.

 

Secondly, I really don't think it's impossible for fans to imagine the sorts of candidates that might be interested in certain clubs in certain predicaments. It's not a huge leap to say 'I doubt Moyes would fancy that', nor 'given Leicester''s circumstances, Cooper seems like a fair pick'. No, it's not an informed analysis, but neither is it entirely the product of fertile imaginations.

 

Thirdly, while I don't find most of it particularly offensive personally, the nature of the derision is obviously irrational when it's based on appearance, or where a guy came from. Some of the more sober arguments also smack of people trying to rustle up rational motives for irrational impulses, and when that spills over into people feeling sure that he'll fail, and seeming unwilling to accept any other possibility, that's not helping our chances.

 

Finally, there's the small matter of how often we've got this sort of thing wrong. You can debate whether we're right to despise one of our most successful managers, in BR, and blame him for our downfall without holding a shambolic board to account, or even whether we were right to be so dubious about other moderately successful managers like Puel and Maresca. But if you go back further you get people being outraged by Ranieri. Before that, wanting Pearson out, in most cases because he simply wasn't Sven. Before that, protesting for O'Neill to go after only a few months in charge, and only two years after Little was getting spat at on his way to winning us promotion. Even with poor appointments like Megson, I'm not sure we gave arguably our most competent manager of that season a real chance, and we were subsequently relegated. On the other hand we were delighted by the appointments of Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Allen, Holloway and Sven etc. I hope we're all willing to accept the possibility that we as a fanbase might be wrong this time too, and that he won't become the scapegoat for a season which may be very hard to succeed in.

[inckley fox]

7 minutes ago, SecretPro said:

I've been on the Forest Forum (and since had a wash)

 

Their main Cooper thread on there is titled:

 

Steve Cooper will always be the MAN!

 

its 721 pages.

 

They still love him for what he did for them and always will.

 

Very much Pearson vibes.

If you get Pearson vibes from reading the Forest forum, then let's hope we don't become his Derby County.

[cityfanlee23]

Hearing the way he talks about the fans, the heritage, the community, and why they are doing it, if he can bring this sort of unity to us and we look like we are building a clear identity and a foundation, he can have a free hit as far as I'm concerned. Can really see why most Forest fans love him. 
 

 

[Seventyseven]

3 minutes ago, cityfanlee23 said:

Hearing the way he talks about the fans, the heritage, the community, and why they are doing it, if he can bring this sort of unity to us and we look like we are building a clear identity and a foundation, he can have a free hit as far as I'm concerned. Can really see why most Forest fans love him. 
 

 

He’s a very good modern media manager. His words are thought through and partially why forest fans still love him. He’s excellent at his brand and getting people onside. 
 

he’s not getting the luxury of 2 wins in 13 here.

 

or 2 wins in 30 away games. 

[doubledeckerderek]

12 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your argument is more or less 'it's easier for a fan to judge the merits of a manager than it is to say whether the appointment itself is any good, because we can see with our own eyes whether we like his football, but we don't know who the other candidates were, nor the criteria'.

 

That's fair, but I think you can add several reasonable points to this. Firstly, that it's possible for us to look at the positives with this guy. His first-season impact is generally very good (I liked watching his Swansea side, for instance), and while things slip in his second year, it's still important to give some context: his second season saw him in the play-offs with Swansea, and stay up with a Forest side in a staggering degree of flux. While I'd understand people looking at his final days with Forest and saying 'I don't want that here', it's as hard to blame him for the chaos at that club as it is to say that Potter or Poch were fully responsible for their shaky starts at Chelsea. I'd also add that Maresca's inexperience and relative youth were often given as grounds for believing that he might get better, and yet Cooper was younger than him when he hit all of these troughs in his career.

 

Secondly, I really don't think it's impossible for fans to imagine the sorts of candidates that might be interested in certain clubs in certain predicaments. It's not a huge leap to say 'I doubt Moyes would fancy that', nor 'given Leicester''s circumstances, Cooper seems like a fair pick'. No, it's not an informed analysis, but neither is it entirely the product of fertile imaginations.

 

Thirdly, while I don't find most of it particularly offensive personally, the nature of the derision is obviously irrational when it's based on appearance, or where a guy came from. Some of the more sober arguments also smack of people trying to rustle up rational motives for irrational impulses, and when that spills over into people feeling sure that he'll fail, and seeming unwilling to accept any other possibility, that's not helping our chances.

 

Finally, there's the small matter of how often we've got this sort of thing wrong. You can debate whether we're right to despise one of our most successful managers, in BR, and blame him for our downfall without holding a shambolic board to account, or even whether we were right to be so dubious about other moderately successful managers like Puel and Maresca. But if you go back further you get people being outraged by Ranieri. Before that, wanting Pearson out, in most cases because he simply wasn't Sven. Before that, protesting for O'Neill to go after only a few months in charge, and only two years after Little was getting spat at on his way to winning us promotion. Even with poor appointments like Megson, I'm not sure we gave arguably our most competent manager of that season a real chance, and we were subsequently relegated. On the other hand we were delighted by the appointments of Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Allen, Holloway and Sven etc. I hope we're all willing to accept the possibility that we as a fanbase might be wrong this time too, and that he won't become the scapegoat for a season which may be very hard to succeed in.

Spot on. I cba to re-post it here but I said something similar in the “How do you feel about Cooper” thread