Steve Cooper has never lost the fans and Nottingham Forest’s season is one that needs less flux and disruption, not more. For once, common sense prevails.
We’re not about to give them vast amouts of credit, because we suspect they stumbled upon it despite themselves and the fact they were (and likely will again) considering the pointless alternative at all.
But well done Nottingham Forest, because we can’t really see any positive to sacking Steve Cooper at this point. It’s true that not sacking their manager makes them something of an outlier in the current relegation bundle. There are nine teams scrapping around in an undignified bid to avoid the drop and the only other one who haven’t changed manager at least once is West Ham, where David Moyes continues to haunt the London Stadium like a very weary ghost.
We’re pretty sure West Ham would probably be better off if they had taken the plunge some months ago and wouldn’t even be entirely against them binning him now even though the moment has passed, but Forest feels like a very different situation.
Forest’s problems this season – and it’s worth remembering that despite a woeful current run their current position is one they would absolutely have taken in August – have been too much flux. West Ham’s have been borne of stasis and perhaps admirable but surely excessive loyalty to past endeavours.
The paraphrased Withnail & I line about Nottingham Forest getting promoted by mistake is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but there’s a kernel of something there. Certainly promotion wasn’t Steve Cooper’s top immediate task or target when he took over a side very much at the arse end of the Championship and looking downwards. Promotion was achieved both against the odds and with a squad begged, borrowed and scrimped. Upon finding themselves in the Premier League quite to their own enormous surprise as much as anyone else’s, Forest had little choice but to buy pretty much a whole new squad. They did so, and actually did a pretty good job of it all things considered. The less said about Jesse Lingard the better, but other than that…
Cooper was charged with bringing together this disparate band of strangers and newbies and turning them into a team while desperately trying not to get cut adrift in the most difficult football league on earth. That he did so was almost as extraordinary as that promotion campaign. Forest’s mistake was in repeating the summer trolley dash in January,…
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