Benítez heads into Forest after Liverpool, Chelsea and Everton
Forest have spent more than £150 million on their squad to compete in the Premier League
Nottingham Forest have been sounding out potential replacements for the under-pressure manager Steve Cooper and one of the names under consideration is Rafa Benítez.
The Times understands the former Liverpool manager, 62, has been contacted by agents representing Forest over the managerial position after a string of defeats put Cooper’s position in doubt.
Forest have spent more than £150 million on their squad to compete in the Premier League, increasing the expectation on Cooper. But his side’s 4-0 defeat against Leicester City on Monday night meant that Forest dropped to bottom of the league.
Cooper, who celebrated his one-year anniversary at the club a couple of weeks ago, last season guided Forest from the bottom of the Sky Bet Championship to a first Premier League return in 23 years. But after four points from their opening eight games and five straight defeats, doubts have surfaced over whether he is the right man for the task.
Cooper said: “I’m not thinking about that or my personal situation. All I’m thinking about is how I can be at my best every single day and the tougher it gets and the harder it gets the more I work and the more it means to me because that’s what leadership is. It’s standing up and being counted and trying to be a role model within the training ground.”
Forest signed 22 players in the summer window and the difficulty of integrating them and finding a system that suits the strengths of the new squad has proved costly. Cooper was landed with a difficult task and admitted it would take time for them to gel.
“I refuse to be really, really critical of the players as a group. I don’t want to be soft and fluffy because it’s tough for them as well,” Cooper said. “To play with new players and stuff like relationships are built over time, and that’s just not what we have at the moment. It’s a unique situation but one we’re trying to face up to and get through.”
For Brendan Rodgers, the Leicester City manager, things finally clicked after a difficult start to the season. Their win lifted them off the bottom, was their first win of the season, and was the first time the defence had looked solid.
“I said before it was a season-changing game if we could get the result and performance, because it’s been too long for how we’ve been used to working here to not be winning,” Rodgers said. “We’ve had a tough start in terms of games, off the back of a tough summer, but tonight feels like the first game of the season and it feels like the performance level was there and now we can push on and start off climbing up the league.”
