Nottingham Forest will surely sack Steve Cooper but he will always be man who made fans believe

As Nottingham Forest supporters gathered outside Wembley after the Championship play-off final, hugging in groups and screaming their gratitude skyward as if to thank whichever deity had listened, it was remarkable how few had even processed that they would be playing Premier League football.

After 23 years in the wilderness, that Sunday was isolated from its wider context. The trip to Wembley was its own redemption story, their first visit to the national stadium in three decades. Winning there was another; fans had got too used to hope being eclipsed by anti-climax and disappointment. The prize wasn’t Premier League football, not really. It was a deliverance.

Perhaps, subconsciously, they were also attempting psychological self-protection. Supporters knew that there would be upheaval and that owner Evangelos Marinakis would be highly ambitious in the transfer market. They knew too of the pressure that would build on those in the current squad who stayed. They knew that they would be among the favourites for relegation. Enjoy Wembley on its own merit and it could occupy its own place in a supporter’s psyche, whatever happened next.

Even so, the haste at which all cheer and goodwill has evaporated is impressive. Forest beat West Ham in their opening home game, with a double dose of good fortune that appeared to be generated by the volume of a fanbase celebrating a monumental day. Since then, reality has bitten deep into Forest’s competence and confidence.

Steve Cooper’s side are bottom of the league. They don’t quite have the worst defence but they did fail to score against the worst when losing 4-0 on Monday evening. Nobody has faced more shots or shots on target and Forest are hardly cavalier in attack to caveat any criticism for that defensive disarray. There is a stasis to their defending, as if Forest are playing their matches two seconds behind their opponents. They have been unable to control the midfield in almost every game.

If Forest look like a team built upon uncertainty, what’s new? In the Championship, they became infamous for the turnover of players, some who would come and go without ever leaving a fingerprint. This scattergun approach would cause a loss of cohesion in the squad at the start of every season.

The pattern isn’t hard to spot: in 2016-17, 18th after 11 games; in 2017-18, 16th after 10 games; in 2018-19, 15th after seven games; In 2020-21, one win in nine to begin the season; in 2021-22, one point from their first 21 available. The exception was 2019-20, when Forest started quickly. They had also only signed five players before the season started. And the only reaction to these slow starts after high player turnover was to repeat the cycle.

Any Forest supporter will tell you that they needed plenty of new players this summer, and that’s true; their promotion came against all expectation and the squad contained integral loanees and those whose contracts were expiring. Add in Marinakis’ publicly stated ambition to spend the broadcasting revenues and a deeper pool of potential transfer targets and the splurge came as no surprise.

But there are ways of splurging. Forest spent the first half of the window buying young players with obvious sell-on value: Taiwo Awoniyi, Neco Williams, Lewis O’Brien, Orel Mangala. Then the season started, the owners seemingly panicked and the transfer targets felt like they were being picked out of a Random Transfer Rumour Generator: Emmanuel Dennis, Willy Boly, Serge Aurier, Remo Freuler, Cheikhou Kouyate. Forest even signed Josh Bowler and Hwang Ui-jo to then immediately loan them to Olympiakos, Marinakis’ other club. That leaves a sour taste in the mouths of some fans.

Cooper will pay the price with his job, now or soon. Olympiakos are already on their third manager since the beginning of August and Forest’s modern history is defined by their managerial short-termism. They have appointed a new manager in each calendar year since 2010 and have burned through 17 in that time. It doesn’t matter that making an effective first team out of unfamiliar parts in a new league is virtually impossible. It doesn’t matter that he only got four games and had defensive injuries.

Cooper will leave with most supporters not angrily calling for his head but apologising that it ever got to this. The managerial turnover at the City Ground means that those fans can struggle to form connections with coaches who they believe will soon wither on the wind: Philippe Montanier, Aitor Karanka, Sabri Lamouchi. All are liked, for a while; few are truly loved. Even if they provoke loyalty, that is lost in the fog of their own demise.

This guy really was different than the others. Cooper was certainly loved because he achieved what most barely dared to conceive: he allowed Nottingham Forest to escape their own incompetence. For the first time in a generation, Forest had a manager who was more likely to leave for better things that slipped out of a side door with the contents of his desk in a box.

It goes beyond the achievement, though. Cooper was successful not just because he is a fine coach, but because, even as an outsider, he understood that the deep connections between the supporters and their club had been broken by mistrust and that the best way to build on the pitch was to restore that connection off it. He taught those supporters that they need not fear pressure as an inevitable prelude to failure. He gave them Wembley.

And then Cooper got swallowed up by the tide of mania that he was temporarily able to hold back. Rafael Benitez or Sean Dyche will probably come in and be asked to knit together a squad of players that barely know each other. If things don’t improve, there will presumably be another surge of spending in January. More likely than not, Forest will fall back from whence they came as if 2022-23 was nothing but a nine-month fever dream. At least they’ll always have Wembley.