Nottingham Forest Must Be Wary Of Signing Too Many Players

Nigerian international, Taiwo Awoniyi scored the f

August 23, 2022 Talk Football

Nottingham Forest Must Be Wary Of Signing Too Many Players

Nigerian international, Taiwo Awoniyi scored the first goal scored by a Nottingham Forest player in the Premier League for the first time in 23 years after scoring the winner in the game against West at the City Ground last weekend. Steve Cooper’s men had to grind out the result against a very unlucky West Ham outfit, but there is plenty of belief in Nottingham about this season. The club has signed 16 new players this season, and the neutrals have sounded a warning to the team about signing too many players that can disrupt the balance of the team.

Forest have gone past the £150m mark, only bettered by Chelsea, and shocked everyone on Thursday after they announced the signing of England youth International, Morgan Gibbs-White. The likes of Niakhate, Cheikhou Kouyate, Dean Henderson, Jesse Lingard, Remo Freuler, Jesse Lingard, Taiwo Awoniyi and Emmanuel Dennis have all been signed this summer, but it begs the question of their recruitment strategy, and there’s a template for what could go wrong by signing all these players in one transfer window.

In the 2018/19 season, Fulham signed 12 new players throughout the campaign, and they were relegated because the new players simply failed to find any chemistry and struggled with the pressure of playing in the Premier League with quality players week-in, week-out. The parallels with Fulham are not a 100% match, as Forest have made very smart signings and Premier League-proven players, but there are fears about how soon they can gel. They play against under-pressure Everton on Saturday, and it would be the perfect occasion for some of the newer signings to show what they are made of.

In Steve Cooper, they have a manager that is very good, and young, but what really sets him apart is the way he connects to the human part of his players, a fact that Jesse Lingard highlighted as the reason he chose Forest over West Ham when he left Manchester United after his contract expired. Players have spoken before of the joy of playing for Cooper, and with his experience of coaching up the ranks from the academy level, he has the ability to get the best out of players and get them to go through brick walls for him. 16 players by any stretch is a lot of signings, but if there’s any manager that can get his players up and running, it’s Steve Cooper. Time will tell though, and by May, everyone will know if their gamble paid off. After all, the league table doesn’t lie.