Nottingham Forest's Journey Back to Glory
Nottingham Forest have spent four years clawing their way back into English football’s elite. Now, under a serial winner with a taste for cups and chaos, the club is being quietly, and very deliberately, pointed back towards silverware.
From Selhurst to the Trent
The new man in the dugout is no stranger to defying gravity. The Austrian coach arrives with a glittering recent résumé from Crystal Palace, where he turned a club more used to survival battles into a side lifting major trophies: the FA Cup, the Community Shield and the Europa Conference League all fell his way.
He has swapped South London for the banks of the Trent, leaving behind links to Manchester United and Chelsea to take on a project that offers something different: control, time and a blank canvas. Appointed early in the summer, the 51-year-old has the luxury of a full pre-season to reshape a squad built by Vitor Pereira and those before him.
This is not a sticking-plaster hire. It is a manager brought in early, told to impose his ideas and given the tools to do it.
Money on the table, expectations in the air
The first major move of the new era has already rattled the market. Elliot Anderson’s record-breaking £116 million transfer to Manchester City has stunned plenty outside the club, but inside the City Ground the deal is seen as fuel.
Evangelos Marinakis, the combustible Greek shipping magnate who owns Forest, has never been shy about spending or swinging the axe. Managers come and go under his watch, but they are rarely left short of backing. Those Anderson millions will not be gathering dust.
Forest have already shown in this Premier League spell that they can live with the heavyweights. Carabao Cup, FA Cup and Europa League semi-finals have reintroduced the club to big nights and big stages. Respect has been earned. The question now is whether those deep runs can be converted into something more tangible.
Chasing the ghosts of Clough
The problem for any modern Forest manager is that the walls still talk.
Brian Clough’s “Miracle Men” defined an era, and their shadows stretch from the Main Stand to the Trent End. Under Clough, Forest didn’t just win; they built and rebuilt, putting together at least two sides good enough to conquer England and Europe. The honours board remains dominated by those years.
Des Walker knows that history better than most. He grew up watching Forest lift the European Cup, then stepped into a team that made Wembley almost feel like a training ground in the late 1980s and early 90s. Cup finals, showpiece days, a club that expected to compete when the ribbons were being tied to the handles.
Since then? One Championship play-off final win. No major trophies. A fanbase that has waited long enough.
“Anyone can win a cup”
Speaking to GOAL in association with talkSPORT Bet Online Slots, Walker doesn’t dodge the obvious question: can Forest win again?
“I'd like to think so, yeah,” he says, before turning the spotlight on Marinakis. “I think with the chairman, he puts his money where his mouth is, to be fair to him. So, with the chairman, I think he wants to win something. I think he's got a big ego as well. So, he likes to be centre of attention. He wants to win something. He wants to get to Wembley and be dancing up and down on the pitch. So, it wouldn't surprise me.”
That ego, that hunger, is not something Walker dismisses. He sees it as a weapon, provided the club channel it correctly.
“I think he will put his money where his mouth is. So, as long as we can harness that and build on what has been done in the last five years, then I see no reason why not.”
Walker then reaches back to a lesson from his own early days. A throwaway line from Steve Hodge in 1987 has clearly stayed with him.
“Steve Hodge said something to me in, I think it was 1987, and I was a youngster, we talked about winning and he says, ‘anyone can win a cup’. He said, ‘the best team wins a league, anyone can win a cup’. And that year, we went and won two!”
The logic is simple and ruthless. Cups are chaos. Cups are about moments, not marathons.
“I've always had that in my mind. Anyone can win a cup. I look at the World Cup today, and you think, it's a cup. Anyone can win a cup. Of course, you need to perform, but anybody can perform on one single day, because you've only got to win the next game before you get to the next one. And we always had that, keep yourself in the hat.”
Stay in the draw. Survive the scares. String performances together one tie at a time. For a club like Forest, back among the elite but not yet ready to chase down a title over 38 games, that route makes sense.
“Can you build a team to win the league? That's going to be difficult,” Walker admits. “Can you win the FA Cup? Can you win the League Cup? Of course, you can. Could you get in one of the European competitions and win one of them? Of course, you can.”
A city waiting for its next big day
This is where the new manager’s pedigree matters. He has already shown he can set up a team to navigate knockout football, to handle the pressure of one-off occasions and neutral venues, to manage the tightrope of rotating squads while still going deep in tournaments.
Forest, under Marinakis, have already pushed the door open. Semi-finals have whetted the appetite. The club is competitive again. The infrastructure, the investment, the ambition – all of it is there.
For Walker, the motivation is straightforward.
“So, it'd be nice to see the fans get rewarded. It'd be nice to see them win. We'd love it. It'd be great for the city. Great for everybody.”
The European nights of old, the Wembley trips of his generation, the trophies that once arrived with almost casual regularity – all of that still shapes what Nottingham expects from its football club.
Now an Austrian tactician with a taste for trophies, backed by a chairman desperate to dance on the Wembley turf, has the chance to write the next chapter. The cups are out there. The hat is waiting. Who says Forest can’t be the ones still in it when the ribbons are handed out?
