COOPER on Monday
Nottingham Forest have done well in the transfer market, says BARRY COOPER
IF Nottingham Forest don’t earn a place in the Championship’s top six at the very least over the next nine months, it won’t be for the want of trying.
Aitor Karanka, his staff and the management group at the City Ground have put together a terrific plan of recruitment since the end of last season, signing 13 players and breaking the club’s transfer record in the process.
What is hasn’t been this summer is reactive or haphazard.
Every signing feels like it’s been thought out and well planned and achieved with unerring success and little fuss.
Forest may have been given the tag of “big spending” by Sky and the BBC in the opening week of the campaign but, in reality, the club needed to invest heavily just to make them competitive because for too long, quite simply, they haven’t been.
Karanka has signed players for a variety of jobs in a multitude of positions and you’d have to say they all make sense.
What they’ve shown is that you also don’t need to spend millions and millions, you can buy cleverly – as was the case on Thursday when just £350,000 was paid for Huddersfield’s promotion-winning hero Michael Hefele.
The second tier is a remarkably competitive league, played over 46 games with a sprinkling of cup games thrown in for good measure, so the Spaniard will need every man in a very competitive squad.
Against Bury on Tuesday night, Sam Byram, Hefele and Jack Robinson are likely to feature in the Carabao Cup, with the manager expecting to make 11 changes to the side which has largely played three games in the opening week of the season, something which is never easy.
What the new arrivals have also done is improve the levels and standards of those existing players in the dressing room.
Danny Fox, Adlene Guedioura and Tendayi Darikwa have all improved markedly and will need to continue their performances if they’re to remain in a very competitive side.
Forest’s display against West Brom, albeit only earning a point, gave a glimpse into what the future could hold, while the win over Reading was one of the bread-andbutter wins that you need to be successful.
It may have been too early to say it but, with Reading, Wigan and Birmingham as a block of three games, it is a real chance to get points on the board early and get themselves up amongst the challenging pack.
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