Kieran Shannon: History and hope might be about to rhyme for Nottingham Forest

Since Brian Clough bade a tearful farewell to the Trent End and Barry Davies, Forest have gone through 26 managers in the subsequent 28 years, including a number of Irish bosses

A SLEEPING GIANT AWAKENS? Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper celebrates Saturday’s 2-1 Sky Bet Championship win over Hull City at the City Ground. Over the last 15 games Forest have picked up more points than anyone in the division. Picture: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images

They say it’s impolite to ask someone, especially a woman, her age, but if they’re into football you don’t have to: You just have to ask what football team they follow instead.

If Leeds are their side, chances are you’re talking to someone in their mid-50s, who made that most precious of choices back on one of those formative, innocent Saturdays in May when Leeds were routinely making FA Cup finals and blowing doubles.

Where once their preferred club formed a holy trinity of the Irish schoolyard, it’s rare to encounter an Arsenal supporter who isn’t older than 25 these days; anyone younger has tended to plump for either United or Liverpool, the days of Henry and Vieira, let alone Brady, O’Leary, and Stapleton, being ancient history to them.

My own young fella in contrast reflects the further internationalisation of the sport. Ever since his grandad bought him a blue ball and a certain no.10 jersey while we were on a Christmas holiday in the Canaries five years ago, Messi has been his man and Barcelona his team, elevating him above the mundane United-Liverpool taunts and preferences of his friends and introducing and educating them to the term ‘neutral’ in explaining where he stood on the supposed biggest fixture in British football.

As for his old fella? Well, today he celebrates what is termed a significant birthday, and as to precisely which one he is celebrating it can be identified by the side whose result he first looks for on a Saturday afternoon: Nottingham Forest.

It all started to go drastically pear-shaped around the time I was half the age I am now. Twenty-five years ago today Forest beat an Arsenal side recently handed over to Arsene Wenger, 2-1, denying the Gunners going top of the table though still not enough to lift us off the bottom of the Premier League. It was Stuart Pearce’s first game as caretaker manager and his inexperience became apparent to even him the previous night. After four hours of playing around with different players and various formations he finally unveiled to a confidante his starting XI, only to be informed he’d forgotten to include a goalkeeper.

Whatever beginner’s luck Pearce enjoyed soon vanished; by the end of the season Forest had been relegated. They had at least made some stab at trying to stay up, signing Dutch international Pierre van Hooijdonk from Celtic, a major improvement on the calibre of striker we’d signed in our ‘attempt’ to avoid the drop three years earlier, the hapless Robert Rosario, and with Van Hooijdonk banging them in for fun in the Championship, Forest came right back up. But only months into the subsequent 1998-99 season, Van Hooijdonk was wanting away and downing tools, and not even calling upon the services of Big Ron, the original Big Sam, could save us from a third relegation in six years.

In fact Atkinson’s first game, also against Arsenal, served up a blooper even more embarrassing than Pearce’s gaffe. As he was being photographed and paraded to the home support before tip-off, Atkinson took his seat, only to realise he was sitting beside Dennis Bergkamp; when you’d been to the City Ground with as many clubs as Big Ron had, it was probably only natural he’d gravitate to the opposing dugout.

It’d be fair to say that Forest have since been through more managers than Atkinson has been through clubs, with a good deal of them lasting just about as long as he did in either dugout that season. Since Brian Clough bade a tearful farewell to the Trent End and Barry Davies, Forest have gone through 26 managers — and at least seven other caretakers — in the subsequent 28 years, with the 25 since Atkinson all failing to win promotion back to the Premiership.

A number of Irish managers have had a crack at it. Joe Kinnear was there for nine months in 2004, but in his attempt to take Forest out of the Championship only ended up relegating us to League One. This week nine years ago Sean O’Driscoll, having taken over the previous summer from former Sligo Rovers boss Steve Cotterill, had Forest only a point outside the Championship play-off spots only to be fired after a 4-2 St Stephen’s Day win over Leeds. Only months after finishing up with the Irish national team, Martin O’Neill, being an obvious link to the glory years of his mentor Clough, was anointed the Special One only to be shown the door five months later, days ahead of the 2019-2020 pre-season.

There’s been further heartbreak and managerial turnover and turmoil since. O’Neill’s successor, Sabri Lamouchi, was on course to win automatic promotion, only for his side to somehow lose out on even a play-off spot on goal difference by virtue of not winning any of their last six games and losing their final match 4-1 at home: After that I swore never to hope or care again, publicly declaring via twitter that I rued the day Martin O’Neill scored two goals in the 1978 Charity Shield and I decided that his team was mine.

Lamouchi was eventually fired following a slow start to the following season and replaced by Chris Hughton, the kind of steady and proven hand you’d think a club prone to such instability needed. But 12 months on Forest had an even worse start to their league campaign, picking up only one point from seven games, leading to Hughton’s inevitable dismissal. Once touted as the man who should have got or should get Stephen Kenny’s job, he now seems to belong in the same category as O’Neill: A yesterday’s man, as brilliant as he and his yesterday was.

What’s compounded that sense all the more is what has subsequently transpired at the City Ground.

Over the last 15 games Forest have picked up more points than anyone in the division — 30 out of a possible 45 — rising from bottom of the table to just a point off the play-off spots. Whereas under Hughton Forest never deviated from his rigid 4-2-3-1 between and during games, Steve Cooper alternates between a 3-4-2-1 or 3-4-1-2, allowing his wing backs scope to push forward as well as his more creative players to pick up the ball in central channels.

Instead of being a big name or relic from the past, Cooper is modern, fresh, cutting edge. Although he was signed by Wrexham, he never played a single game in the professional ranks. He never jumped the queue of the coaching ranks: instead he served his time and apprenticeship in the Liverpool academy, nurturing the likes of Raheem Sterling and Trent Alexander-Arnold before progressing to coach the likes of Ben Foden to become world U17 champions.

From leading Swansea to the play-offs in successive seasons, he’s hugely au fait with the league and the loan market. He also seems to working in tandem with CEO Dane Murphy, recruited during the summer from Barnsley. Instead of being the definitive basket case, Forest suddenly seem a model of best practice.

Maybe it’s an illusion. Maybe it won’t last. But for the first time in years, even decades, Forest are vibrant again. And even more importantly, on the verge of being relevant again.

Without being a prisoner to the club’s past, Cooper has embraced it, getting his players to meet greats like John McGovern, even though Cooper himself wasn’t even born when McGovern lifted the European Cup in 1979.

I was seven and a half then, much too young to have any concept of how heavenly that was, as much as I viewed Clough and all those players as gods. Forget ever playing in or conquering Europe again, now we’d just settle to see the club play in the Premier League again: For days like when we had with Collymore and Roy, never mind when we’d Birtles and Shilts.

But for the first time in the longest time, history and hope might be about to rhyme.