Nottingham Forest have five games left to make sure of a top-six finish as the race for promotion reaches its climax.
Steve Cooper’s side returned to winning ways on Monday, putting the disappointment of losing to Luton Town behind them with a 4-0 thumping of West Bromwich Albion. They are fifth in the Championship table, with a five-point cushion - and two games in hand - on seventh-placed Millwall, and seven points below Bournemouth, in second.
Next up is a trip to Peterborough United on Saturday. Ahead of the game, Reds reporter Sarah Clapson answered fans’ questions in a live Q&A on our Forest Facebook page.
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Q: How impressive is the attitude of this squad?
A: It was important how Forest approached the game on Monday. It would have been easy to feel sorry for themselves after feeling hard done by at Luton - but that would have been a dangerous attitude to take and wouldn’t have got them anywhere.
Forest needed to put Luton to one side, move on quickly and focus on the next job. They did that with a really professional performance. Everyone played really well against West Brom.
A clean-sheet and four goals, you’d take that all day long. Who knows how important goal difference could be at the end. Forest are very well-placed on that front, at the moment. The more they can build on that, the better.
Steve Cooper was told after West Brom that the club have equalled their best points tally for 11 years. He just said, ‘that’s not enough, we want more’. That’s a great attitude to have, always striving to improve and looking at the big picture - that transcends throughout the whole squad, too.
Forest don’t just want to settle for where they are or how far they’ve come. They want to finish the job.
Talking about attitude, the mentality of the players who haven’t seen too much game time is also important. Those kinds of players can make such a difference when they do get their chance - but they have to approach things in the right way. That’s certainly been the case for Forest this season, when you look at the likes of Sam Surridge, Tobias Figueiredo and Cafu.
When you’re fighting for something, it’s not just about your first XI, it’s about the squad - knowing that everyone has a part to play. You need players who aren’t necessarily going to start, or at least start every game, but who can come off the bench and make an impact by having the right mentality - Cooper calls them finishers.
Q: Did Jack Colback mean to score?
A: That’s been the big question this week! He said he did - with a big grin on his face!
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve watched it back, but the more I’ve seen it, the more I think he was going for goal, even if he wasn’t banking on scoring.
He struck it so sweetly. There’s one video where you can actually hear the thud as his boot connects with the ball.
Cooper said Colback was sticking to his guns, that he meant to score. Surridge said he meant to score, because he was the only one in the box for Colback to aim for if it was a cross.
Either way, it was absolutely sensational. One of the best I’ve seen live, and definitely goal of the season, without a doubt.
It was great to hear the crowd encouraging him to shoot whenever he got the ball after that. I’m sure he’ll get that for a while. It just shows the confidence and belief in the team that players feel they can have a go in that type of position.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant it. He deserves it, because he’s been brilliant this season.
He’s been so, so important. Having someone in any squad who can take on a different role when needed - and do it really well - is crucial.
Q: Will Keinan Davis be back for the play-offs?
A: It’s a massive blow to have him ruled out with injury. He’s been immense since signing in January.
The estimate is that he’s likely to be out for four to five weeks. In theory, that would mean he’d miss the rest of the regular season but could be back for the play-offs.
I’m sure he will be working really hard to try to get back for then. He’ll be desperate to be involved.
We’ve seen how the likes of Lewis Grabban, Steve Cook and Scott McKenna have all put in so much effort to get back from their injuries quickly. Davis will be the same, because everyone wants to play at the moment.
Hopefully we haven’t seen the last of him in a Forest shirt. If he does get back for the play-offs, that would be a huge boost.
Forest have shown they can cope without key players already, though. And they did the same again on Monday, when both Davis and Lewis Grabban were missing.
Q: It’s so important we go up. We will lose a lot of loan players, but manager leaving a risk if we don’t go up?
A: That’s the flip side to having a great season. When you have players who are doing well, invariably they attract attention. And when you have a manager who is doing well, he’s bound to catch a few eyes as well.
There might well be other clubs looking at him; it wouldn’t come as any surprise. That’s bound to happen when you take a team from dead-last to pushing for promotion in this short space of time.
What I would say is, whenever we’ve spoken to Steve Cooper - on or off the record - he’s always given the impression he is very committed to this project. He is clearly enjoying his time at Forest.
He’s someone who fully appreciates the size of the club, its history and what it means to the fans and the city. He was really keen to establish a strong relationship with supporters, and he’s done that.
He doesn’t strike me as the kind of manager who will seek out other opportunities if promotion doesn’t happen this season. The impression given is that he wants to see the job through, whether that happens this year or not. He’s fully bought into the project.
If promotion doesn’t happen this season, he’ll believe Forest have a great chance of pushing again next year. It’s an exciting time to be at the club.
