ClaphamFox

If your friend is genuinely thinking of giving up his season ticket because we might be appointing Steve Cooper, tie him up to a chair, put on a leather glove to protect your knuckles and punch him repeatedly in the face until he sees sense.

Why? He's not known for an adherence to a particular style of play. In the Championship with Swansea and Forest, he played possession football (as he did with England youth). Then in the Premier League with Forest, he tried a number of different formations and approaches. In this sense he's the opposite of Maresca, who was totally committed to one style of play. You can argue about the relative merits of being tactically focused to the point of rigidity (ie Maresca) vs being so flexible you don't even have a clear identity (ie Cooper), but to say that Cooper doesn't suit our current squad is a bit odd - his career so far suggests he'll choose whatever formation/tactics he believes the squad is best suited to. Anyway...all this may be academic as I'm not even convinced it will be Cooper yet.

You can get 1/1 on Paddy Power and Betfair. A few others have it at 4/5. SkyBet is the outlier in being more heavily odds-on.

The odds have also not moved at all in the past few days. You can still get evens on Cooper - if it's as nailed-on as some people believe it is, there's a great chance to double your money.

Why?

Which is untrue anyway...

If that's the case and we're only looking at out-of-work managers, I suspect Cooper is as good as it's going to get. However, I hope you're wrong and that we're willing to pay for somebody we really want.

If the club genuinely wants Cooper, you'd expect it to happen soon given that he's currently a free agent. If this drags on beyond the weekend, it would imply we're looking at other candidates...

Were you thinking the same when Wes Morgan lifted the Premier League trophy in 2016?

You're easily pleased

This would be my guess. Newcastle or Chelsea.

Go on then.

Don't we have an obligation to buy him under the terms of the loan contract?

Yes he is aware of that. But Steve Cooper coached in the England youth set up for five years and is apparently highly regarded by the FA, hence my Swansea friend's prediction that he'll return to manage the England first team.

It's not just Forest fans. My Swansea-supporting mate absolutely loves Cooper and is adamant he'll go on to become England manager one day. So he's managed two clubs and at both of them the fans still seem to love him. That's not a guarantee of success with us, but it shouldn't be dismissed either. I'd still prefer Corberan. But I won't be devastated if it's Cooper.

Having listened to Dominic Wells' tactical analysis on the WYS podcast, I'm even more in the Corberan camp than I was before. However, I also don't think Cooper would be as terrible a choice as some people seem to think. It was a shame that Wells' only comment on Mark Robins was to say that he's massively overachieved at Coventry given their wage bill. It would have been interesting to hear a bit more tactical analysis on Robins.

A perfect summary.

I suppose this is where it could get messy. We disputed the EFL's right to impose an embargo, didn't we? I don't think that has been resolved - if, for example, it was found that the EFL was wrong to impose a transfer embargo for concerns over our PSR compliance for 23/24, could that result in it being determined that the defined process had not started, legally speaking, before we were promoted?

Rule 79 seems to say that if a club has already been charged by the EFL when they go up, the PL can implement EFL rules. However, if a club hasn't been charged (which we haven't for 2021-24 as the accounting period isn't even over yet), the dispute will be resolved in accordance with Section X. But what does 'Section X' say?

They were drifting but have come back in again. Corberan is now 2/1 on betfair - he was 4/1 an hour or so ago.

This is the question. Will Top stick to his principles and choose a manager to continue the possession football model - as Rob Tanner has suggested - or has the looming points deduction persuaded him to be more pragmatic and focus on getting a manager who can create a siege mentality in an attempt to scrap our way to survival?

There's 26 days before the end of the month

Be prepared for several more weeks of it. I get the impression the club will take its time over this and we may not hear anything for a while.

Yes. If a particular candidate suddenly lurches to 1/5 I might take some notice. As it stands, the odds are just telling us that nobody really has a clue.

Still at 11/8 on betfair, as he was earlier this morning.