Latest Nottingham Forest news as Steve Cooper’s Reds prepare to face Brentford at the City Ground
The Reds host Brentford on Sunday (2pm kick-off) looking to maintain their strong start to the season, but head coach Steve Cooper says the visitors’ relatively settled squad is an advantage for counterpart Thomas Frank.
Following Forest’s busy summer, Cooper is in the midst of integrating 13 new recruits. He has drawn from the lessons learned during the previous season, when 29 players were added over the course of two transfer windows, but he acknowledges that it will still take time for his new-look group to come together.
Since many of the players have been at Brentford for a time, the team has a strong sense of cohesiveness. That might work well in their favor,” he remarked.
“Brentford and many other teams will enjoy genuine consistency in their team’s connections. That’s a really fantastic thing, and we would like to have that as well in the future. However, we are still working on it.
Although we have a number of new players who joined this summer and some who arrived at the very end of the transfer season, we are still in the early stages of being completely new. All of those players are integrating into our team and club at various levels.
“We are still in the process of transitioning into the team we aim to become over time. But in order to do it, you must amass enough points and win enough games.
“We can’t just bring in all of these new players and hope to become a better team that plays freely. That is not how it operates. It need time to play games, train, analyze, and educate ourselves on performance today.
“Some players are playing in the Premier League for the first time, and regardless of what they have done in the past, it takes time to get up to speed. Some it takes longer than others, and that’s great.
“We are currently working to integrate new players once more. We’re hoping to find the proper path and strengthen our team. However, it is simpler said than done. There are no promises made.
For us to truly develop into a linked, free-flowing squad with and without the ball, a lot of hard effort must be done. However, we’re going to give it our best go.
