The Athletic’s Daniel Taylor appeared on the latest edition of the Going Up, Going Down podcast where he spent some time discussing Nottingham Forest.
Nottingham Forest ended the 2019/20 season on a low note as they dropped out of the play-off places on the final day of the campaign following a 4-1 loss to Stoke City.
However, despite their disappointing end to the season, Sabri Lamouchi remains the Reds’ manager going into the 2020/21 campaign and Taylor spent some time discussing the club’s decision to stick with Lamouchi for the coming season and touched on some changes that have been implemented in terms of the club’s recruitment policy over the current transfer window, during this recent podcast appearance.
The journalist said: “The Greek owners have got a reputation from Olympiacos of moving managers in and out, and they’ve done the same at Forest, really.
“They have always liked Sabri Lamouchi, that said, I thought that he’d be gone in the morning [following the last day of the 2019/20 season].
“I just thought that it was such a desperate kind of collapse that I just didn’t think they would take public humiliation like that.
“Basically, they’ve actually taken the view to keep him on, they’ve brought him over to Greece, they’ve argued about certain things, they’ve agreed on certain things, I think he’s now getting more of a say in transfer recruitment than he was.
“There’s been some changes in the backroom staff and they’ve been bringing in more experienced Championship-type players, rather than going with young, Portuguese kids who, really, apart from some glimpses of talent, haven’t really been promotion material.
“So there have been a lot of changes, but not really the changes that, perhaps, in that really emotional sort of post-mortem, that you might’ve expected.”
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So, as can be seen in what the journalist had to say, it appears that while the Reds have opted to stick with Lamouchi despite the club’s disappointing end to last season, Forest have changed their approach in certain areas in order to try and give themselves a good chance of enjoying a more positive campaign during the 2020/21 season.
If it is true that Lamouchi has been given ‘more of a say in transfer recruitment’ as Taylor claimed, then hopefully, for the French manager, Forest’s new signings such as Lyle Taylor, Jack Colback and the loan signing of Luke Freeman hit the ground running with the Reds, as if they fail to do so, then perhaps more questions will be asked of the manager.