South Notts NFFC

I can only speak for myself here but I've enjoyed watching your rise and wanted you to win the league. It's always good when the usual cartel gets shaken up and I feel similarly now about Villa. Variety is good for football although it's difficult to see anything like that happening again. Miracle stories like yours or our European Cup winning teams are reasons why we watch the game.

I agree and that in general Forest fans do 'care'. Where I think the problem comes from a Leicester point of view is that we don't 'care' as much as some Leicester fans would like us to. Again, I'm generalising as some fans on both sides will feel differently to this. My perspective over the years has been (again, in general) that Forest see Derby as rival #1. Leicester see Forest as rival #1 and want Forest to feel similarly and don't like it when we don't.

Yes I agree your location can dictate who you 'hate' the most. Notts is a long county and those in the North Nottinghamshire towns like Retford and Worksop are much closer to Sheffield than the city of Nottingham and there's the whole miner's strike history there too. Having lived in several parts of the county and having followed Forest for 40-odd years I'd say if you were to do a poll now amongst every Forest fan you'd find that the large majority see Derby as our biggest rivals and take more joy seeing their demise than any other club. Then there's yourselves, Sheffield United (but not Wednesday), Wolves, Liverpool (for those fans from the 70s/80s) and then I suppose Notts County. I actually like to see Notts do well as it's good for the city generally to have two clubs on the up but some Forest fans would prefer to see them fade into insignificance. Partly due to their hatred towards us and there's also a lack of gratitude there. When County have been in the absolute shite on and off the pitch Forest have made efforts to help them out only for their former fool of a chairman Alan Hardy to try and drum up a rivalry between the clubs by having a pop on twitter, I'm not sure Forest have sent a player on loan there since. Don't bite the hand that feeds you... I do think these things can be dynamic though and a lot depends on circumstances. If Forest and Leicester both spend years playing each other in the Prem that could be the new de facto EM Derby. If County suddenly started doing well and playing us more then a real rivalry might develop there too.

That would be my prediction too. Cooper will set up to counter I'd imagine and so will Nuno. We would probably be better off benching someone like Elanga who needs space to run into.

Over-exaggerating an injury was a big 'Cooperism' whilst here. It was basically every week that he'd say someone was out for weeks only to see them in the line up, and vice versa. In fact it got to the point where you basically took anything he said about a player's fitness with a pinch of salt.

Our defence has definitely been our strength this season and as I mentioned in a previous post it's mainly down to Milenkovic who I have no idea how we managed to sign. He's a champions league level CB without doubt. I agree about our wide players, bar his winner at Anfield Hudson-Odoi hasn't been like he was towards the end of last season and Elanga can be very hit and miss generally. Luckily for them Chris Wood basically seems to score in every game at the moment but at some point others will need to chip in. I wouldn't be against Jota playing instead of Elanga as he's looked lively each time he's come on this season.

It's been the complete opposite to last season, where we were on the wrong end of a 3-2 score in 7 games as well as there being a few 2-2s. I can explain this difference using only two words, Nikola Milenkovic. The impact he has had has been absolutely incredible.

Every season Everton look awful and every season they wriggle out of it somehow. They are the turd that won't flush.

Wolves looked poor against us as well and really got away with one thanks to an unstoppable screamer. From what I've seen generally though I'd say they have enough about them to wriggle clear. Ipswich and particularly Southampton look absolutely doomed already to be honest.

True but before that you lost Kante, Mahrez, Maguire, Fofana, Chilwell and Drinkwater at basically one a year. It's nign on impossible to keep replacing players of that level.

I wasn't expecting prime Barca or anything but they surprised me just how bad they were. We weren't great at times either and yet still fully deserved to win. If Eze gets injured they're doomed.

There's only so long you can get away with selling off your best players. Southampton found this a few years ago as did yourselves. Unless your recruitment is ridiculously efficient like Brighton it will catch up with you eventually. This league is brutal like that.

We were a whisker away from signing him too and I'd imagine he was coming to start ahead of Wood. What a close shave that was.

Case in point, Palace just brought off former sheepshagger Will Hughes to a chorus of boos. On comes Schlupp obviously a former Leicester player and there's no reaction at all. I would love to see us get something on Friday but not because it's Leicester, but because it's another vital point(s) in the quest for Premier League survival which for me is still the aim.

Alright, alright. You've caught me out. I, along with every other Forest fan, despise everything about Leicester City.

Well I'm glad you got all that off your chest. Feel better now?

That's how I personally view the game and I'd imagine a lot of Forest fans do too. I always thought Leicester saw Coventry as their biggest rival as well? I suppose the longer we both play each other at this level the more chance of something a bit more meaningful developing, particularly as it looks like there's no chance of the sheep bothering either of us any time soon.

I think he's both suspended and injured. His girlfriend posted a picture on Instagram a few days ago and he was on crutches. I suppose you never know though with the sort of mind games that get played now. If anyone knows Gibbs-White though it's Cooper who has managed him 3 times so if he does play there will be a very specific plan for him.

Difficult to predict this one until we've played tonight. Four points would be a superb return from the 2 games, how they come I wouldn't be bothered really. It's not helpful that we have over 2 days less recovery time but I suppose it means we have more than West Ham do the game after. The word is that Gibbs-White is out tonight so hopefully he'll be alright for the weekend. After a couple of wins you'll be tough to beat and I'd be expecting a very difficult game. Doubt it'll be one for the purists though.

We have put out a statement too, deliberately including that the FA actually were pushing for a £1m fine. It's probably unwise to publicly question the referee's agenda but I liked it. It certainly ruffled a few feathers, especially as in the interview post-match Neco Williams suggested if we were a top 6 club we'd have gotten some of the decisions.

There are a few alleged offences back in Greece but that's all they are. You asked me what I thought about our owner (presumably so you could respond with this) and I've told you. I can only comment about how he's been as an owner for Forest.

I genuinely think he's one of the best owners in the league. There's no doubt he does it all purely for the love of it instead of any hope of profit. Just in the last few weeks he stepped in and bought Viv Anderson's European Cup medal when he was going to auction it, and then when a local club had their facilities vandalised he paid for the repairs. The first few years were a bit rocky and from the outside it seemed like there was too much interference and very scatter-gun with managers and players but he sort of lucked out getting Cooper in. Since about halfway through our first season back up he's left it to those who know what they're doing though and things 'seem' a lot more stable. There's no questioning his ambition, he wants us to be regularly top half of the Premier League at the least but whether that's realistic or not is a whole different matter.

I would also say that Cooper was absolutely brilliant at self-PR. He knew exactly what to say in the media that fans want to hear and he surely knew that in management it's often the fans that make or break you. He knew to pump the chest, he gave the fist pumps at the end of wins and he constantly bigged up the atmosphere in interviews. We fans are simple creatures really and love all that. He also seemed to have a genuine affinity to the city, there are stories of him meeting up with some of our old European cup players for a beer each week and him going above and beyond to reach out to fans. Again this just endears him further, so much to the point where even when we came up and were getting battered the fans just sang his name. It's difficult to remember a time a set of fans had that sort of connection to a manager, it was extreme and nonsensical to me but some were even prepared to accept going back down if it meant Cooper stayed.

His managerial record is almost completely successful, relatively speaking. As you say he had success at youth level then in his first two seasons in senior football got Swansea into the playoffs twice. Then after that was his time here. He used to say with us that we were having to play in a way which wasn't how he wanted to ideally. Perhaps he feels that like his time here, he just doesn't have the players at Leicester to do much else in the Premier League, other than low-block and counter.

The promoted Forest and the survival Forest the next season were very different. Cooper actually showed a lot of tactical flexibility when we came up which is an example the likes of Martin at Southampton might want to follow. In our promotion season we had a squad of decent players but just had Chris Hughton killing any sort of spirit in the camp. One thing a lot of the players have said about Cooper is how good he is with man management. I just think he made them all believe again and even in our first season up with 30 odd players to try and keep happy there were never any rumours about unhappy players. Once we started winning again we just had momentum and it never really stopped. Once up we became awful to watch frankly but the novelty of being back after so long away meant no Forest fan cared and we ground out a series of 1-0s. To be fair to Cooper again he had an owner who like a kid in a sweet shop just kept handing him new players to coach and we also had an absolutely horrific injury record too. Keeping us up was more of a feat than getting us up in my opinion. Cooper has his flaws of course but he'll never have to buy a drink in Nottingham again. Whoever was the one to finally take us up was always going to get hero worshipped.