Steve Cooper
Steve Cooper admits it will take time to work out his best Nottingham Forest team following a summer shopping spree. Of the players who featured against Marco Silva’s side that night, Joe Worrall, Scott McKenna, Steve Cook, Jack Colback, Ryan Yates, Sam Surridge and Brennan Johnson are the only ones still in the squad. And it remains to be seen how many of them will be in the starting XI.
Steve Cooper said: “It’s definitely a challenge, if I’m being honest. I’m not going to shy away from it. Whatever team I put out against Fulham, there’s a sense of the unknown about it, because we have so many players that are new. Even the lads who have already played, we still haven’t done a pre-season with a few of them and all that sort of stuff. I don’t think we need to make all that the elephant in the room. I think we need to say, ‘this is what we are’, but it doesn’t mean we can’t win the next game or play well. We work on it every day. And of course, sometimes, you want certain types of players for certain types of games. For sure, the team that I decide to pick for Fulham would not have been the team which would have played at Leeds, because it’s a different team you’re playing against, and home rather than away. All of those circumstances kick in. What we’ve got to do is try to quickly build our bank of knowledge on these players. And they’ve got to do the same on each other and us, so that whoever we decide to play, there is a connection. It doesn’t matter whether you are Joe (Worrall), who’s been here forever, or you are Serge, who has just walked in, we are Nottingham Forest. So we have to quickly become one, as quick as we can. It is a challenge to do that. We are coming up against Fulham, with a lot of players who Marco (Silva) has worked with for a while. I’ve said all along, it would have been great if we could have cracked on with last year’s team and added a few. But that was never going to be the case. This is the road we’re on, and we have to not look for excuses, not look for ways out. Is it easy? No. But are we excited about getting there? Yeah.”
