…and then kicking f*** out of his telly in a fit of pique.
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The Relegation Dogfight 23/24
- Thread starter UnfinishedBusiness99
- Start date
Monkman
Grenville Morris
Ipswich Town are at the door and want a word. OK, it's not quite the same thing - but it's equivalent imo, at least if they go up.
Again I'm not bashing Cooper FFS
MaxiRobriguez
Bob McKinlay
Turner's first six games were far more assured than Sels' have been. In fact he was looking pretty good (one lucky escape against Brentford aside) until the Liverpool blunder, when the Welsh Messiah* simultaneously said "we don't kill players for mistakes" and promptly dropped Turner, who has looked a nervous wreck ever since.
* This is absolutely Alf-bait
Turner was struggling to play out from the back and there was clamour to start Vlach. We all had our "this is the Greek GK he must be at least par" inner thoughts and Cooper must have wondered the same, and that's assuming it was his unilateral choice to switch keepers which may not have been the case.
Anyway, it was a minor issue which got turned into a full blown crisis. Shame for Turner (and us) as I feel like "you're OK to just kick it long" type arm round Turner's shoulder would have prevented much of our GK'ing problems.
Monkman
Grenville Morris
Agree with that.
Gyros Peter
Sauce salad?
Add Taiwo to that list too. On the surface it looked like a mistake, but a boy can hope (and it's not like we were really out of the Brighton game at any point - it could have worked if better executed).
MaxiRobriguez
Bob McKinlay
Different.
Confidence is massive in sport, it's much easier for a promoted L1 side to keep form up into the Championship and challenge for promotion than it is turning round a sinking tanker.
Lots of examples of promoted L1 sides challenging at the top end in their maiden Championship season: Southampton and Norwich both managed back-to-back promotions from L1 to PL within the last decade. Watford did it 20 odd years ago. Brentford challenged for top six when they went up...
That challenge is definitely getting harder as financial disparity gets wider but it's still more likely to occur than the Forest scenario where the same financial disparity is in play but you've got a squad of dejected players to deal with too.
^^^ That.
There is a sort-of similar example in German football; Otto Rehhagel took over 1. FC Kaiserslautern in 1996, following their shambolic relegation from the top-flight; he engineered a remarkable turnaround, winning the 2. Bundesliga by ten points, and then the following season, Die Roten Teufel stormed the Bundesliga and won it, becoming champions of the 97-98 season, becoming the first promoted team to do so, a feat never seen before (or since).
To this day, „King“ Otto never has to buy a drink in Kaiserslautern - with good reason - and Forest fans should remember Steve Cooper‘s tenure in a similar way.
Robertson
Geoff Thomas
Good. So we’re all cleared up then. No-one at the club ever claimed we should be qualifying for Europe this season 
Cortez the Killer
Impressive member
With Taiwo, I hope you're right but I am not so sure. He's looked not quite fit for the past couple of games. However Taiwo should be the sensible choice against Luton, his hold-up play is superb, and I hope Elanga, MGW and CHO will benefit from it. We're certainly going to need some points from the next few games.
Sent from my SM-G780G using Tapatalk
Is Nuno the stubborn type? I hope he doesn't think he was right to put that team out? Any references to him putting his hands up on that one?
But not Nuno? He's as culpable, he's been here long enough now.
Our form is poor and it's his job to find answers and kick start us back up the table.
He can do it, he's more than capable, but it doesn't absolve him from being part of this season's clusterfuck
Gyros Peter
Sauce salad?
He doesn't look fit because he isn't. Hopefully a couple of weeks where he can train more and recover less might help him along the road to recovery.
Alf-engelos Mindminackers
The Artiste formally known as "Wanksy"
No they 100% did dude. I thought you were just talking about Marinakis, but people at the club claimed that we could...Good. So we’re all cleared up then. No-one at the club ever claimed we should be qualifying for Europe this season
Murillo told The Telegraph: “The coach has shown faith in me and I want to repay him with my personality on the pitch.
“We have a quality team that can achieve a lot. It’s still very early in the season and if we click, and stay united, we can even compete for European competition.”
'I want to'... Murillo now makes claim about Steve Cooper at Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest central defender Murillo has made a big claim about manager Steve Cooper and the team this season.
A lot of if's in there, but between the owner "demanding success" and statements like the above, I don't think you can blame fans for seeing Europe as a standard being talked about as an achievable goal at the club.
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Wow, you could not write that script, from dispair, to elation in 45 mins. the cold hard facts is that the squad we have should have at least
12 points more than we have. Now looking at the fixtures, we should get at least 10 points clear of luton, and that will take care of a points deduction.......that might be optimistic, but doable......but then its forest.
12 points more than we have. Now looking at the fixtures, we should get at least 10 points clear of luton, and that will take care of a points deduction.......that might be optimistic, but doable......but then its forest.
Gyros Peter
Sauce salad?
Could/should pedant alert!No they 100% did dude. I thought you were just talking about Marinakis, but people at the club claimed that we could...
Murillo told The Telegraph: “The coach has shown faith in me and I want to repay him with my personality on the pitch.
“We have a quality team that can achieve a lot. It’s still very early in the season and if we click, and stay united, we can even compete for European competition.”
'I want to'... Murillo now makes claim about Steve Cooper at Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest central defender Murillo has made a big claim about manager Steve Cooper and the team this season.www.nottinghamforest.news
Bob Fossil
Nottingham's dirty secret
Agree with the post earlier & agree entirely about Murillo. Fantastic potential & so many great moments so far that make you go 'wow'....... but we've undoubtedly looked worse as a defensive unit & made more basic errors since he came in. Which isn't a surprise given his age & inexperience in professional football in general- let alone the best league in the world. Not scapegoating at all as he's saved us a fair few points & is going right to the top but we need to be pragmatic.
Coupling him with another kid undoubtedly confounds the problem & if I see those start against Luton I think we can forget any points at all.
Boly & Niakhate back there as steady heads are required during squeaky bum time. If we start to pull away or look comfortable we can then look at bringing him/them in again.
Coupling him with another kid undoubtedly confounds the problem & if I see those start against Luton I think we can forget any points at all.
Boly & Niakhate back there as steady heads are required during squeaky bum time. If we start to pull away or look comfortable we can then look at bringing him/them in again.
Personally I will judge Nuno at the end of the season I think it's hard for any manger to come into a team that's struggled all season.
It's a collective failure and if we go down Nuno will be apart of that but hopefully we stay up.
MASE
Up-Front
Absolutley right.
We've regressed defensively, he hasnt stopped us leaking goals at set pieces.
His insistence on playing out from the back has probably done for a half decent goalkeeper & coughed up more than a few goals.
Granted Sangarre at the AFCON has helped, but hes yet to settle on a CM pairing to grab hold of a game.
His substitutions hve been baffling
He royally screwed up the team selection at Brighton.
Unlike Rob Edwards, his body language gives me zero confidence he's up for getting his team out of this.
He needs a win at Luton, nothing less, or we're surely questionning the merits of the Cooper change.
Alf-engelos Mindminackers
The Artiste formally known as "Wanksy"
Spot on. Him, Danilo & Dom need to be in the right setup to flourish.
The team can't carry all of their inconsistency and naivety in one line-up regularly. We may get away with it for the odd game if they all click, hopefully we will Luton if they all start, but the majority of the time naivety from at least one of them will let us down.
This is a significant black mark I have against both recruitment and Nuno. Nuno for not recognizing this, and recruitment for spending bigger portions of money on too many players who are still learning their chops, and who blow hot and cold.
We're the type of club I expect to spend fortunes on 4 McGugan's a window lol. I loved McGugan myself, but your team can carry 1, maybe 2 of them at most. Our recruitment strategy seems to be trying to build a full team of them lol.
(slight exaggeration I know, but it's part of my "narrative" 
)
Alf-engelos Mindminackers
The Artiste formally known as "Wanksy"
And he'd OK's Mangala's sale too, who would have helped loads with the CM pairing issue IMO.
But he was bought in precisely to change a side that was struggling into one that wasn't.
Otherwise what was the point of the change? Or even saying a change was required?
It's amazing how often we completely turn on it's head the success/failure criteria for a new manager and hold them to a lesser standard. Baffling.
Monkman
Grenville Morris
That's surely at odds with the claim that the squad's too big, leading to constant chopping and changing. OK, in an ideal world we'd have sold someone who's been less effective than Mangala, but (a) you don't choose who another club wants to buy and (b) arguably our two best performances of the season didn't feature Mangala. The reasoning was fairly sound imo.
MaxiRobriguez
Bob McKinlay
Selling Mangala was sound on the criteria that:
1) We needed to raise money
2) We were overstocked for CMs
3) There was interest in Mangala
4) The best "FFP money" was for Mangala or Yates
5) There was hope that Sangare would be an improvement on Mangala
But it ignores the other side of the coin in that:
1) We wouldn't have needed to raise FFP money if we didn't buy Sangare.
2) We wouldn't have been overstocked in CM if we didn't buy Sangare.
3) We wouldn't be "hoping" that our marquee signing would be better than a forced exit of a player who up to that point was playing well for us.
Big pressure on Sangare to come good. If we survive this season and Sangare adapts and becomes a stalwart for us then hindsight will say it was a good move. If we go down and/or Sangare gets bomb-squaded then it'll have been a poor move.
Monkman
Grenville Morris
Agreed on all, I was responding to the implied criticism of Nuno for the Mangala sale.
MaxiRobriguez
Bob McKinlay
Personally I don't think Nuno chose it.
I reckon he was told Mangala was going to get sold because we needed to raise the money.
And then he was either told again, or Nuno decided himself, to drop Mangala and focus on building other CM partnerships, because he was going to be forced into that at some point in the near future anyway.
Given the way Nuno has set us up in that 4-2-3-1, with a plan to try and play wide in a controlled manner, I think he'd have actually loved Mangala to play in that pivot alongside a more energetic/combative player. Mangala and Dominguez may have been his chosen two.