twitter.com/alexquantock/status/1683943825755209728?t=v_QxPzklJqJSLQL9ZwGOfQ&s=19
Sign me up for this.
8 May 2023
2.0K
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I think you mean X bollocks.
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BolloX.
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www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/07/26/steve-cooper-nottingham-forest-premier-league-transfer-news/
Percy (who spent some time watching training sessions in Spain) reckons: Henderson + another goalkeeper; Ismail Jakobs for left back (Carlos Augusto as second choice); defensive midfielder - Sangare, then Ndidi or Adams and maybe a central defender.
Brennan's price is £40m.
This is interesting spin:
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Aaron Donnelly to Dundee on loan for the season seems to have gone unnoticed by Forest. (I think it was tweeted on the academy account).
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Aurier’s signed now and seemingly wants to stay, the rest can go
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Interesting piece - and Percy is more reliable / informed than many. Of the alleged Saudi offers, Angry Serge is the only one I’d be sad to see go, though Wily Coyote has his place too. I suspect we’ll never know the full story about what’s been going on at the Academy, but the failure to renew GazBraz’s contract can’t have been just on a whim…
Rather disconcertingly and un-Forest-like, it feels as though there’s a plan - only time will tell whether it’s a good one, obvs.
That stat about Forest finishing 12th in a season that started in October is interesting. On the one hand, every club looks great if you remove the shittest part of the season - but on the other, our chaotic start was hardly surprising in the circs, and it does kind of align with the general unscientific feeling that we progressed significantly throughout the season
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It was very fine margins last season in the Premier league. Seems to me we started ok, then it went badly fairly quickly, then it got much better around the Cooper contract extension and when Aurier joined, we had a good period, then it looked grim again, but we ended on a high.
On the players linked to Saudi, they are squad players rather than any of them individually being critical but as a collective they have vital premier league experience and it's critical to have squad players with experience. If the price is right they should go but it should be fast if so and we will need replacements.
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Unscientific as in wrong? We biorhythmed through the season. Clearly we were completely hapless at the start. For all the reasons we knew (a lot of players new to us, and the division). We were also shit in the (late) middle after the world cup break and the January recruitment.
Injury/illness (eg Yates, the centre halves, Awoniyi ) also had a big effect on the development, which was definitely not a straight line.
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That's not a threat, it's a pipe dream. Except Serge.
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Very very similar article in the mail, except they say Brennan's price is £45m.
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Unscientific as in based on gut feeling (including the ever-reliable Retrospect-o-Scope) rather than statistical analysis. We were (understandably?) chaotic at the start, then we started to get our act together, then a few key injuries (Taiwo, Yates, most of the central defence, Hendo) risked undermining the whole thing, then (c. Liverpoo away) SSC tweaked the approach and this combined with returns from injury saw us over the line.
At no point, however, did I feel that SSC had run out of ideas, lost the crowd (or dressing room); even during the second shit period it felt as though lack of key players was the issue rather than not knowing what we were trying to do.
The word “throughout” in my original post was not meant as in “linear, steady progression”; just that there was progression!
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Fair enough....my point really was that it was not a season of steady acclimatisation and progress. It needed constant tweaking and re-invention. I would go as far as to say that after a 'successful' season, we are far from having a blueprint and squad to take us forward. We managed change and jeopardy...and we might well see a bit more of the same this season.
I wouldn't want people to get their hopes up inappropriately.
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This feels like a paragraph that has been inserted into the story at the request of Forest, and he's done it as a thank you for the holiday.
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Those two positions are not mutually exclusive. Did we ever have a blueprint after such an unexpected promotion? We were ever going to have steady acclimatisation and progress last season? I would argue that was not a realistic expectation for us, given the combined chaos of a last-minute promotion, an earlier start to the season and an exodus of key players, together with some early arse-kickings, a mid-season break and a lousy injury record throughout the season.
We at least actively managed all the uncertainty and challenge of last season with a series of tactical and personnel changes resulting in a decent outcome* rather than just changing the manager several times.
It might therefore be more reasonable to expect steady acclimatisation and progress this season, with the confidence that there are some really good young players with more experience, a manager who can deal with significant challenge and an owner who was not as trigger happy as we had feared.
So: I would say progress and grounds for optimism!
(*I did not think it was possible: and as I write, it seems even more ridiculous that we stayed up).
