Nottingham Forest's Ambitious Quest for Trophies

Nottingham Forest have spent the last four years clawing their way back into the Premier League’s consciousness. Now, under an Austrian coach with a taste for trophies and an owner with an ego to match his ambition, the club is being pushed towards something more dangerous: expectation.

A serial winner on the Trent

Forest’s new man in the dugout arrives with a résumé that demands attention. At Crystal Palace he did what many thought impossible, turning a club defined by survival battles into a side that collected major silverware. An FA Cup, a Community Shield, a Europa Conference League title – not just good days out, but a body of work that has shifted how English football views him.

His success at Selhurst Park inevitably drew glances from higher up the food chain. At one point his name floated around conversations at Manchester United and Chelsea. Those moves never materialised, but they tell their own story. This is not a coach stumbling into a big job; this is a manager whose work has forced open doors.

Forest moved early. A summer appointment, not a late scramble. A full pre-season to reshape a squad inherited from Vitor Pereira, to drill ideas, to test combinations, to decide who belongs in the next chapter and who does not.

There will be change. A lot of it.

Money on the table, pressure in the air

The first big domino has already fallen. Elliot Anderson, one of Forest’s most valuable assets, has gone to Manchester City in a record £116 million deal. A staggering fee. A clear statement that Forest now operate in a different financial universe to the one that nearly swallowed them a decade ago.

Evangelos Marinakis intends to make that money count. The Greek shipping magnate has never been shy about spending or about making managerial changes when his patience snaps. He wants a return, and he wants it visible – in league position, in nights under the lights in Europe, in silver cups held high.

Forest’s recent history shows they are no longer just making up the numbers. Carabao Cup semi-final. FA Cup semi-final. Europa League semi-final. They’ve flirted with the big stage again, reminded English football that this is not just a club with a famous past but one with a pulse in the present.

Yet the honours board tells a harsher truth. Since the days when Brian Clough’s ‘Miracle Men’ turned Nottingham into the unlikely capital of Europe, the major trophies have dried up. Clough built at least two great sides, teams that treated Wembley as a familiar destination, not a dream. The late 1980s and early 90s made Forest regulars under the arch.

Since then? One Championship play-off final win. Nothing else added to the cabinet.

Walker’s belief in the cup route

Des Walker knows what it looks like when Forest are truly dangerous. He lived it. The former defender emerged as part of Clough’s second great side, having watched the European Cup triumphs that still define the club’s myth.

Speaking to GOAL in association with talkSPORT Bet Online Slots, Walker was asked the question Forest fans quietly circle every season: can this club get back to winning trophies?

“I'd like to think so, yeah,” he said, before turning quickly to the man bankrolling the project.

“I think with the chairman, he puts his money where his mouth is, to be fair to him. So, with the chairman, I think he wants to win something. I think he's got a big ego as well. So, he likes to be centre of attention. He wants to win something. He wants to get to Wembley and be dancing up and down on the pitch. So, it wouldn't surprise me.

“I think he will put his money where his mouth is. So, as long as we can harness that and build on what has been done in the last five years, then I see no reason why not.”

The route, in Walker’s mind, is obvious. Not the long, grinding march of a title race, but the sharp, ruthless cut of knockout football.

He reached back to a lesson from his own early days.

“Steve Hodge said something to me in, I think it was 1987, and I was a youngster, we talked about winning and he says, ‘anyone can win a cup’. He said, ‘the best team wins a league, anyone can win a cup’. And that year, we went and won two!

“I've always had that in my mind. Anyone can win a cup. I look at the World Cup today, and you think, it's a cup. Anyone can win a cup. Of course, you need to perform, but anybody can perform on one single day, because you've only got to win the next game before you get to the next one. And we always had that, keep yourself in the hat.

“Can you build a team to win the league? That's going to be difficult. Can you win the FA Cup? Can you win the League Cup? Of course, you can. Could you get in one of the European competitions and win one of them? Of course, you can. So, it'd be nice to see the fans get rewarded. It'd be nice to see them win. We'd love it. It'd be great for the city. Great for everybody.”

Between memory and ambition

That is the tension at Forest now. A club framed by Clough’s shadow, driven by an owner desperate to carve his own legacy, guided by a coach who has already shown he can turn outsiders into winners.

The league may remain a distant summit in an era of state-backed giants and entrenched elite. But cups? One-off ties, surging crowds, a team built to spring a surprise over 90 minutes? That feels like Forest territory again.

The money is there. The manager is there. The belief, clearly, still lives in those who remember what it once looked like.

The next time Forest walk out at Wembley, will it be as plucky visitors or as a club finally ready to write a new line on that honours board?