Nottingham Forest gone back to the future or just epic swansong? Inside the return to prominence

Having attended my first game at the world famous City Ground in Nottingham Forest’s last year in the top flight, my experience of supporting Forest couldn’t be more different to that of my Dad’s.

Being brought up past European glories, hearing stories about the great Brian Clough and seeing the trophy cabinet in the Peter Taylor stand was exciting and confusing in equal measure because what I was seeing week in week out, from the age of 9, did not reflect the club I was told about and subsequently fell in love with.

But over the course of last season’s miraculous surge to promotion, Forest shed their sleeping giant’s skin and the long suffering Garibaldi faithful got to see their beloved Forest back in the top flight.

We’d returned to where we knew we belonged to build something new under the backing of owner Evangelos Marinakis and managerial talent of Steve Cooper. In many ways, we’d gone back to the future.

The City Ground has become one the most electric home atmospheres in the land. Having spoken to fans that travelled the continent following Forest during their European heydays, they unanimously agree that the City Ground has never been so loud and intimidating than it is right now.

It seems the built up tension of 23 agonising years away from the top flight has been released and lifted Forest’s support to a new stratosphere.

This has, without doubt, been integral to Forest remaining outside of the bottom three since the World Cup. The 12th man cliché really is true in Forest’s case.

They saw to it that Liverpool continued their trend of having not won a Premier League game at the City Ground. They held arguably the best team in world football, Manchester City, to a 1-1 draw and beat Spurs and Wolves in two thrillers which saw them reach the semi-final of the league cup in the debut season back in the top flight.

So words cannot articulate how meaningful these moments are, particularly for the generation of Forest fans who were used to away days against Rochdale, and whose greatest memory to date may just be promotion from League one, or even avoiding relegation from the Championship on the last day of the 2017 season (Jordan Smith, you beauty).

Pride has been restored to a long-suffering set of supporters who had grown tired of chants such as ‘you’re not famous anymore’ or ‘Champions of Europe, you weren’t even born.’

Against the odds, Cooper has seen to it that we can indeed believe in the chant ‘thirty signings, who gives a ****, Nottingham Forest are staying up.’

But questions still remain around Forest’s away form. The Reds have only managed three away goals in the Premier League and Cooper knows that picking up points on the road is vital for them to secure survival.

And for Forest fans, this is everything. The implications of relegation are almost too grave to think about.

Would a Premier League side offer the talented Welshman a top flight job? Could Forest maintain the services of their most valuable players?

So while hope is still high, the question remains: Have Nottingham Forest gone back to the future or is this just an epic swansong?

With Cooper’s influence and Marinakis’ continued investment, there is a real sense of hope and optimism that this journey is far from over.