IAN HERBERT: As Cooper saved Nottingham Forest, he had class to embrace club’s past

It was not an offer John McGovern, twice European Cup-winning captain of Nottingham Forest, had ever received from one of the club’s managers.

So he asked Steve Cooper, “Are you really sure?” when he was invited to come over whenever it suited him, to watch the players train. Yes. Cooper was sure. “We’d like you to get involved,” he told McGovern.

And so it happened that at 11am on many a weekday this season, one of the legends of Brian Clough’s great Forest side found himself on the sidelines, watching Cooper during the training sessions who, against great odds, had now knocked the club out of the Premiership.

It’s a very different world now, of course, McGovern tells me. It looks a bit like a Star Wars set to him, with the drones buzzing overhead to film the players and a battery of machines to keep an eye on them.

Certainly a long way from the Nottingham Corporation asking Clough’s players to leave the public pitch they trained on for the ’79 European Cup semi-final against FC Cologne.

But one football principle remains as fundamental today as it was when Clough put it to the test. “Attitude,” says McGovern. “I always look for that first.” He’s seen that a lot in the past nine months. The intensity of the warm-ups and the tasty tackles that fly in, in the small games.

He is impressed with the way Cooper asks players for their opinion. (Not something Clough would have generally invited.) He’s struck by the importance Cooper places on getting his messages across to the players, collectively and individually.

And by his occasional intolerance when he feels he doesn’t have the attention of a group. “Listen to what I say,” he will demand.

McGovern laughs when asked if he sees anything of Clough in this, as if to say that man was simply incomparable, but he certainly sees a thread back to the past. “The way the crowd chanted Steve’s name in the last game against Arsenal brought me back,” he says. “It was an echo of how they felt about Brian Clough.”

Many managers wouldn’t want a legend of their club’s glorious past observing their work closely and McGovern is well aware that he’s not one of those ex-players who ‘stick their nose in’ as he puts it .

But Cooper will occasionally seek his thoughts, along with those of Garry Birtles, Paul Hart and Ian Storey-Moore, who have all watched training this season. Managers with the class to embrace the past generally have the humility to know that they are no bigger than the past.

That’s certainly the case with Cooper – and it goes some way to explaining his cult status in Nottingham. Those who don’t know about Nottingham Forest were unaware of this connection during some very dark days last autumn when the Sky Sports Fantasy Football show mocked Cooper’s appearance and he appeared to be dust.

On the training field, he was consistent, even during a streak of five straight losses early in the season, says McGovern. Cooper would go back to the training field and return to the main goal of coaching to make players better.

Many of the 29 players who arrived at Forest in last summer’s chaos have improved – most notably striker Taiwo Awoniyi, who was raw and in need of coaching following his arrival from Union Berlin.

There is a pattern here. Cooper made players better as he led the England Under-17s to the 2017 World Cup. And then he took over at Swansea, where the club’s American owners were reluctant to invest and it was up to him to find younger, cheaper talent.

Many of his England winners joined him in South Wales, including Morgan Gibbs-White who was a revelation at Forest and arguably their player of the year.

Gibbs-White has created 63 scoring opportunities this season, surpassing Jack Grealish, Mo Salah and Gabriel Martinelli. He is being watched closely by Gareth Southgate. And the FA is keeping a close eye on Cooper, whom they consider one of them. Don’t be surprised if he eventually succeeds Southgate.

Of course there are no guarantees. It’s a measure of football’s relentless destructive power that Cooper’s previous performances counted for naught at his point of serious danger this season.

Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis proved the exception to the rule by not firing him – in part because he couldn’t find a better alternative; in part because Cooper carried the supporters so clearly. They even chanted his name after those five defeats.

The decision is one to celebrate as we approach the end of a season of crushing governance uncertainty, with those living in the hot seat in what observers have described as ‘a permanent state of transience’.

If Cooper isn’t quite the Premier League manager of the year, then he’s certainly the most underrated manager of the year: a person who turned out the lights most nights last winter and wondered if the roof would be on his feet the next day. roof would fall. career.

He wasn’t complaining about the pressure, or being asked to assemble a team from one of the fastest-assembled squads the Premier League has ever seen.

“He kept smiling,” McGovern says, recounting what he saw from the sidelines. “There would be a nutmeg and the players would be in pieces and take the mickey. That told me it was good.’

McGovern will be back on the training field at 11 a.m. on Thursday.

Cooper is not one for extensive reflections on his oeuvre, but in his office, next to a number of portraits by Clough, hangs an image of Denzel Washington with a quote added to it.

Convenience is a greater threat to progress than deprivation.

Victory in Stockport is testament to the excitement of the sport

A friend sends me a video of her granddaughter, who lives in Edgeley, a five minute walk from the Stockport County lot.

She’s not a fanatical follower, but a seven-year-old who got carried away by everyone talking about County’s play-off game against Salford, at the stadium down the road. So someone took her.

“Guess what, Stockport County go to Wembley and we watched the game live and they won – on penalties,” she says in the clip, demonstrating her stockport face paint and balloon.

“We went out on the field at the end because they won. It was the best thing ever.’

A fragment of a testimony to the joy the sport can bring and the joy restored to a community by Stockport owner Mark Stott, who does not seek publicity, but has managed that club with drive and vision.

Rafa is better than a first week attraction

Of course, it’s sad that Rafael Nadal is announcing that next year will probably be his last, but we have to hope that his farewell tour won’t be as benign as it sounds.

We will remember him for all his great competitive intensity. Better for him to walk away now, with that memory intact, than spend a year processing the majors as a first-week attraction.