Steve Cooper
Head coach Steve Cooper was left with mixed feelings after Nottingham Forest lost 1-0 to Olympiacos in their penultimate friendly of the winter break. The Reds rounded off their week-long training camp in Greece with a meeting with their fellow Evangelos Marinakis-owned side at the Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium. The visitors saw plenty of the ball without creating too many opportunities in a first half which was played at a tepid pace. They improved after the break, but were already behind to a header from former Forest man Pajtim Kasami. And although Serge Aurier, Brennan Johnson and Morgan Gibbs-White had chances, an equaliser wouldn’t come. Cooper’s team have one more game to play before the competitive action resumes. They make the trip to face Valencia next Friday.
Steve Cooper said: “The most important thing in these games is performance. First half, we weren’t particularly good. We weren’t brave enough with our play and were a little bit too negative with our positional play. We didn’t get players in positions to receive balls, to make a difference against Olympiacos’ shape. That had a knock-on effect with our front players, who came a bit deep. We struggled to get momentum in the first half. I didn’t like us, truth be told. Defensively we were okay. We gifted them some opportunities, and even the goal we conceded is not like us to lose a man as free as that from a set-piece. At half-time, I said, ‘come on lads, we’ve got to play with a bit more intensity, let’s play a bit of an English game’. We hadn’t put our athleticism into the game enough. But we did in the second half. We were much better in the second half. The game was played in their half. I only felt like they would really hurt us through counterattacks or mistakes. We were much better. We were on the front foot and had players in high positions; the full-backs were pushing on and we looked more of a threat. We had lots of shots. Morgan’s was probably the moment where he coulda, shoulda scored. I felt like a goal was coming, and that’s what we want. You come away from the game thinking, ‘okay, second half was much better, but first half wasn’t’. We’ve got to snap out of that bit. But we’ve also got to look at the second half and think, ‘this is what we need to be’.”
