Sir Alex Ferguson Challenge | Part 6 | Moving Into Title Contention

This Sir Alex Ferguson Challenge attempt is really heating up as we added a fourth trophy and qualified for the Champions League automatically for the first time in 2027. But now the pressure was on as we had just two years in which to match the great man’s achievement of winning the English title within seven seasons.

Last season’s exploits saw us begin the season with £220m in the bank, which saw the board agree to my requests to boost our training and youth facilities and youth recruitment then invest £17m into expanding the stadium capacity by around 4,000 seats to 34,739. In other news, our efforts in the Champions League saw Forest become the 18th-best team in Europe ahead of the likes of Juventus, Milan, Spurs and Newcastle.

To boost those finances, I made the bold decision to sell the declining Lorenzo Lucca, who joined Napoli on loan with £35m due in installments and an optional fee of £22.5m. We also cashed in on captain Oscar Gloukh, who wasn’t great last season and wanted stupid money with 12 months on his contract, to Newcastle for a new club record £47.5m and backup right-back Adam Steele to West Ham for £10m.

That gave us a transfer kitty of more than £160m to work with. The biggest outlay saw us achieve the rarity of beating Liverpool to a signing as we brought in winger Jevon Simons for a new club-record £42.5m rising to £68m. We also added a few more exciting full-backs in Jorge Pavas for £4.5m from América de Cali, Lassaad Kadri from Lorient for £7.5m and Vinicius Gabriel for just £130k from Londrina. We also took a bit of a gamble on 18-year-old Palmeiras striker Danilo Vilar, which I’m pretty sure will pay off.

We’re sticking with the tried and tested formation, but the new signings mean a few tweaks and changes. Simons comes in to start on the right, Amílcar Silva becomes the starting striker, Kadri will compete with Salvador Ortiz at left-back, and I’ve decided to play versatile youth product Johnny O’Hanlon in the midfield role. I’ve also tweaked a few instructions by removing floated crosses given Amílcar is 9 inches shorter than Lucca, adding shoot on sight, and I’m toying with changing the left wing role to an inside forward. We may also go wild and change to a positive mentality for some matches.

Getting Started With Season 6

The media still predict an 8th-place finish with title odds of 50/1 with Chelsea and Man City the favourites at 2/1 and 3/1. We had a tricky start with a trip to Spurs and we earned a 0-0 in a game that had 39 shots, with Elia Caprile making 10 saves! But we won our first home game 2-1 against Brentford with goals from O’Hanlon and centre-back Nathan Zeze and midfielder James McAtee scored the only goal at Brighton. We then fell behind after 30 seconds at home to Palace but came storming back with goals from O’Hanlon, Simons’ first for the club, Amílcar and Gomes and 2 Dário Essugo assists to win 4-2. And that put us top after 4 games!

We maintained that form as we went to Old Trafford and thumped Man UFC, who’d had a terrible start despite signing Josko Gvardiol for £81m, 4-0 with a quartet of unusual scorers centre-backs Zeze and Ousmane Diomandé, Essugo’s 1st league goal in 76 attempts and midfielder Jovan Sljivic. But the ultimate test of our credentials followed as we entertained Liverpool, who we’d beaten once in 15 attempts and lost the last 5 meetings, on the Friday after an international break (which always seems a little unfair). And we unsurprisingly lost 3-1.

We enjoyed a 13-game run in all competitions in which we conceded once and scored 14 and a streak of 10 consecutive Premier League clean sheets before a 2-0 defeat at Chelsea. We were back to what we knew best with a 1-0 win over Leicester on Boxing Day then an O’Hanlon brace and a Reiss Nelson assist treble led a 4-0 thumping of bottom-side Stoke (for whom 35-year-old Neymar got injured) 3 days later. And that left us top of the Premier League heading into 2027, with a 1-point lead over Liverpool and a 7-point gap back to Newcastle in 3rd.

Champions League Challenge

We got a potentially tricky set of league phase games including a trip to Inter and home games and entertaining Atlético and PSG again. But we began in style as a Simons hat-trick led a 4-1 thumping of Braga, Nathan Zeze and Andreja Dunderski goals earned a superb 2-0 win at Inter and Amícar scored the only goal at Villarreal. A 0-0 at home to Wolfsburg was followed by Amílcar and midfielder Jovan Sljivic edging a 2-0 win at home to Atlético.

A feisty visit from PSG saw both Danilo and Jamal Musiala sent off within 18 minutes! But with both sides down to 10, an Amílcar brace sandwiched Leao and Mbappe strikes to earn a solid 2-2. A first loss followed 1-0 in Sociedad but an easy 2-0 win at Lech thanks to a Vilar double eased us into the top 8. The round of 16 served up a clash with Napoli, who won 2-1 in Italy and then put in an impressive defensive effort to beat us 1-0 in our home leg.

Maintaining A Title Fight

2028 began with several tough games that began with entertaining 3rd-place Newcastle, and an O’Hanlon strike rescued a point after Dwight McNeil’s opener. But that dropped us out of 1st as Liverpool won an 11th successive league match! We came so close to a 2-1 win at Man City, only for Álvarez to score a 91st-minute equaliser, before Dunderski nicked a 1-0 win at home to 4th-place Chelsea and a double from the unlikely source of centre-back Leny Yoro was enough to defeat Spurs 2-1. While Liverpool drew with Villa and Leicester to take us top again by a point.

The European exit and an FA Cup quarter-final defeat allowed us to fully focus on the league. And that showed as we continued the good form with a 1-0 win at Arsenal then wins over Fulham and Norwich. The edgy wins were put to an end as we went to Sunderland and battered them 6-0 with six different scorers but returned as Nelson’s 88th-minute strike nicked a 1-0 victory over Villa.

Five Games From Glory

That strong form left us 11 points clear of Liverpool, who had a game in hand, going into our final five games of the season. However, a tricky final two games saw us go to Liverpool then entertain Man UFC.

Game 1 – West Ham (12th, away): The first three games of the run-in were crucial given the tricky conclusion. But we started poorly with a disappointing performance and 2-0 defeat at mid-table West Ham. Liverpool won at Palace then won their game in hand 4-1 at home to Sheff United to ominously move just five points behind us with four games remaining.

Game 2 – Crystal Palace (6th, away): Another tricky trip to London followed and we struggled again, trailing 2-1 until Simons’ 91st-minute equaliser nicked a point.

Game 3 – Brighton (19th, home): Three days later, we entertained relegation-threatened Brighton and were equally unimpressive. But luckily the defence and Caprile bailed us out as Dunderski scored the only goal, which saw the goalkeeper surpass Alisson’s Premier League record of 22 clean sheets. We’d played twice since Liverpool’s last match, but they kept up the pressure despite their European focuses by winning 2-0 at Newcastle.

Game 4 – Liverpool (2nd, away): That teed up a massive game as we made the trip to Anfield, who’d lost after extra time to Bayern in the Champions League semi-final on Wednesday night before we played them on the Saturday evening. Liverpool came out strong, having five shots in the first 10 minutes but a few tweaks saw us stem the flow through to half-time. Our first shot saw Zeze hit the bar on 47 minutes and very little happened in the second half. And the game dragged to a 0-0 in which the top 2 teams in the Premier League created a combined 0.93 xG!

Liverpool had to win their game in hand at home to Spurs in midweek to take it to the final day. But Alfie Devine scored after 10 minutes and Liverpool failed to score for a second time in four days to hand us the title!

Nottingham Forest were Champions of England for the first time in 50 years!

We celebrated the title by parading the Premier League trophy around the City Ground before an early Amílcar double then Simons and Nelson strikes helped us put four past Man UFC for the second time this season in a 4-1 win.

That saw us win the Premier League by eight points from Chelsea as Liverpool’s slump dropped them to 3rd. We only conceded 21 goals all season but four teams scored more than our 63, and we only lost four times and won 26.

We didn’t come close to the top scoring players but Nelson’s 12 assists was only bettered by Saka and Caprile led the way with a new league record 24 clean sheets. Zeze won Young Player of the Year, I won Manager of the Year for the first time, and Caprile, Zeze, Nelson, O’Hanlon and Simons were named in the Team of the Year.

English Champions Inside 6 Seasons!

We’ve ticked another objective off on this challenge, by winning the title one season sooner than the great Sir Alex managed. This has been an exceptional season in which our young squad really hit new heights.

Amílcar led the way with 18 goals and 6 assists in 43 games followed by Simons’ 10 goals and 8 assists and the impressive O’Hanlon’s 9 goals and 9 assists from midfield. Nelson topped our assists chart with 14 but Essugo was statistically our best player with a 7.14 average rating.

The promise at the club was confirmed by left-back Salvador Ortiz winning NxGn 2028 with Pavas in 15th and striker Jean Paul Jara, who’s been branded the “Peruvian Mbappé” in 20th. Furthermore, our Under-21s side won the U21 Premier Division 2 led by Vilar’s 16 goals in 18 games.