An exciting May 2026 saw Nottingham Forest win both the FA Cup and the Europa League against fellow English sides. That takes us to a total of three trophies in four seasons, leaving us 35 short of the 38 that Sir Alex Ferguson won with Man UFC. We also now have three seasons to win the Premier League with Forest.
We boosted our finances by selling off players that weren’t up to it or had little time on their contracts. That included backup full-back Dujon Sterling and midfielder Stanis Idumbo Mazumbo, who both joined on free transfers, moving to Everton for £15.5m and Sunderland for £13.5m. We also sold Jovan Mijatovic and Cher Ndour to Watford for £11m and £10.5m and Yaser Asprilla to Stoke for £8.5m.
That left us with a transfer budget of around £100m. Our first signing was a Brazilian wonderkid in 18-year-old striker Ivanildo Gomes, who we’re going to train as a central midfielder given his 17 passing. But the big requirement was at centre-back so we signed 6ft 4in Lenny Yoro for £30m from Lille and Brandon Donaldson, who needs to retrain as a ball-playing defender, from Benfica for £17.5m. We also brought in wonderkid striker Amílcar Silva for £6.5m from Boca Juniors, a couple of promising Chileans in left-back Salvador Ortiz and attacker Bastian Ayala for £2m and £4m from Universidad Católica, and backup right-back Adam Steele for £10m from Hearts. And we snapped up Man City midfielder James McAtee on a free.
The summer activity left us with a bigger squad and a huge amount of potential. However, our plans were rocked by left-back Emanuele Valeri suffering damaged cruciate ligaments in a friendly, which ruled him out for up to 7 months. Ortiz will compete with Lucas Castro for the left-back spot but the rest of the starting 11 remains as it was last season. However, it has significantly better strength in depth supporting it with 11 players at the club having 5-star potential.
2026/27 Kicks Off With Supercups
Last season’s success saw us compete in two curtain raisers. First was the Community Shield, which was a bit of a classic that we were a little unlucky to lose 4-3 to Liverpool. Then my 200th game in charge of Forest was the UEFA Super Cup against European champions Barcelona. And we won it 3-1 after extra time with Amílcar scoring on his debut and captain Oscar Gloukh scoring twice in the last four minutes.
Defensively Solid Start To Season 5
Our summer activity saw the bookies slash our title odds to 50/1 and predict an 8th-place finish. We started at home to Newcastle, who are 20/1 for the title, and Reiss Nelson’s strike earned us a 1-0 win. Two more clean sheets followed with 0-0s at Everton and Brentford before losing 2-0 at home to Man UFC. But a Lorenzo Lucca double, which ended a rare 10-hour goal drought, led a 2-0 win at Sunderland.
A proud moment for the club saw Johnny O’Hanlon, who remains the only youth product worth mentioning, replace the out-of-form Ângelo and score the only goal at home to West Ham. That was the 19-year-old’s first league goal for the club and only his 2nd in total – with the other goal being an equaliser in our Carabao Cup Final win. That earned him another start at Bournemouth a week later, and he went one better with a brace in a 3-1 win. He won September Young Player of the Month and his first Republic of Ireland cap, while I won my first Manager of the Month award.
The solid defensive start continued with a 0-0 at home to City, Nelson nicking the only goal at Fulham then a 3-0 win over Norwich through Danilo, Gloukh and an O’Hanlon penalty. And after 10 games we sat 2nd, having lost once, scored 12 and conceded just 3 goals. Another O’Hanlon penalty earned a 1-1 at Spurs and a late Yoro header earned the same scoreline at home to 10-man Chelsea. We also drew 1-1 at Leeds before a 4-0 thumping of 3rd-place Palace, in which Lucca scored just his 3rd goal of the season and O’Hanlon scored his 6th, took us top of the Premier League for the first time.
December began with a trip to 12th-place Arsenal led by newly-appointed Pep Guardiola and we held them to 0-0. But our shocking record against Liverpool continued with a 2-1 home loss, which takes us to just one win and 12 defeats in 14 meetings in this save. Late Amílcar and Nelson strikes saw us beat Brentford 2-1 and we repeated the feat three days later as Ângelo and Amílcar’s late goals earned a fantastic smash-and-grab 2-0 win at Man City. And that took us into 2027 in an impressive 2nd place, just one point behind Chelsea!
Back In The Champions League
Our 2nd Champions League campaign saw a tricky set of fixtures including trips to Napoli and Bayern and hosting PSG and Atlético.
We started at Napoli and were a little unlucky to lose 3-2 to a Raspadori hat-trick, but rotated teams recorded back-to-back 3-0 wins over Legia and Midtjylland. We got ripped apart by Mbappé then lost 3-2 at PSV despite Amílcar’s brace but got a crucial win in Antwerp before two tough games after Christmas.
First up, we welcomed Atlético, who were 2nd in La Liga. And we performed superbly, dominating the Spaniards by 17 shots to 3 and made one count as Yoro tapped home the only goal from a corner. But we were even better in a trip to Germany as we nicked a win at a heavily rotated Bayern! And that result took us into the top 8.
The last 16 saw us draw Monaco and dominate the first leg in France by 18 shots to 5 but fail to make any count and drew 0-0. A Gloukh double had us looking good in the home leg only to concede twice in the last 20 minutes and it went to penalties. But we scored all five spot-kicks then Elia Caprile saved the French side’s fifth.
Things got a lot more difficult in the quarter-final against Real Madrid. The home leg was up first and we started really brightly, forcing Courtois into a couple of saves. And we got our reward as Nelson finished calmly after 26 minutes, and things got better as Camavinga was sent off for a two-footed challenge from behind on O’Hanlon. We went more positive after the break and doubled our lead with a Danilo free-kick. We gave Real a chance as Osimhen got a goal back then Dário Essugo missed a late penalty, but this was a massive win in terms of our progress. But even bigger was our more defensive approach earning a 1-1 at Santiago Bernebéu thanks to Gloukh’s 76th-minute equaliser.
So for the 2nd time in 3 seasons, Forest were in the Champions League semi-finals. Next up was another meeting with an absolutely stacked PSG team. We just about edged the home leg but found Donnarumma in inspired form and Mbappé was again the difference as he nicked a 1-0 win. And we unsurprisingly lost 3-0 in France.
Potential Title Challenge?
2027 began with another big January sale as Ângelo had 18 months on his contract, wanted £200k a week and had been in poor form compared to O’Hanlon. So I sold him to Monaco for a new club record £40m. Valeri also moved to Nice for £14.25m, given Ortiz had performed well during his injury and he also had 18 months on his contract.
On the pitch, we started with three 1-0 wins at Norwich and Southampton and at home to Fulham. A strong run of seven games unbeaten ended with a 2-1 loss at Newcastle and the inevitable loss at Liverpool. But Nelson and an Amílcar brace inspired a 3-0 win over Leeds, which left us 3rd going into the final 8 games but a huge 12 points back from leaders Chelsea. Our Champions League qualification hopes were boosted as Nelson and Gloukh goals downed 6th-place Villa 2-0 then Nelson and Gomes earned a 2-1 win over 4th-place Spurs.
That moved us 7 points behind Chelsea with 6 games remaining and going into a huge trip to Stamford Bridge between the two Madrid games. And our more defensive approach worked nicely as winger Andreja Dunderski and McAtee earned a 2-2. But any chance of challenging Chelsea ended as a rotated side lost 4-1 at Palace. An Amícar double sealed a 3-1 win at home to Everton then he rescued us a point at West Ham, which sealed our first top-four finish. But defeat at Man UFC dropped us to 4th before Amícar’s goal earned a 1-0 win at home to Sunderland.
That saw us stay 4th just 1 point behind both Man City and Liverpool. We only lost 6 times and more impressively had the best defence, only conceding 28 times all season. As a result, Caprile was our only player to feature in the top players with a league-high 20 clean sheets, which was 2 short of Alisson’s league record.
Heading In The Right Direction
We may not have won anything this season, but we recorded our best finish so far and reached a 2nd Champions League semi-final by beating Real Madrid. So it was pretty clear that this Forest team is heading in the right direction with plenty of potential at the club.
Amícar led ur goalscoring chart with 16 in 46 but only 16 starts, as Lucca went from a 51-goal season to just 14 in 48 and 9 in 33 league games. Gloukh also scored 14 while Nelson impressed again with 13 goals and a club-high 15 assists. But the star of the season was arguably Caprile, who broke his own club record with 25 clean sheets and only conceded 45 in 50 games in all competitions.
A good example of our potential was O’Hanlon’s emergence as a starter. He also csme 3rd in NxGn 2027 with his fellow attacker Dunderski in 5th. And he was joined at the club by 3 more countrymen in our latest youth intake led by full-back Oscar Godkin.
We now have 2 more seasons in which to win the title to keep pace with Sir Alex Ferguson in this SAF Challenge. So could we build on another season of improvement and push towards a title challenge?
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