Forest aren’t exactly known for keeping things stable.
The new season has started brightly but, as any experienced Nottingham Forest fan will tell you, a crisis is only just around the corner.
Here are three reasons why Forest supporters should keep their optimism on the cautious side:
Beware the chop
Mark Warburton has done very little wrong since rocking up at the City Ground in March. Not only did he keep the club in the Championship by virtue of a final day victory over Ipswich Town, and with a little help from Blackburn Rovers’ inferior goal difference, he has also presided over a fine start to the 2017/18.
Forest are, at the time of writing, currently sitting pretty in sixth, playing some of the most attractive football in the division.
However, Warburton cannot afford to rest on his laurels. If Forest supporters thought much-maligned former owner Fawaz Al-Hasawi was a little trigger happy then Evangelos Marinakis is like a teenager on GTA with the rocket launcher cheat learned off by heart.
Olympiakos won every league title between 2010 and 2016 but also sacked seven managers in that time, including Marco Silva, Ligue 1 winning Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim and Ernesto Valverde, the new man at the helm of Barcelona.
New year, new fears
Nottingham Forest kept the nucleus of their squad together this summer by retaining key players like Ben Osborn and Joe Worrall while tying 18-year-old wonderkid Ben Brereton down to a new four-year contract.
However, Forest have been powerless to prevent their best and brightest from being lured away in recent years and the huge pulling power and financial might enjoyed by even the most middling Premier League club means every Championship team is at risk of having their most important players stolen away.
Osborn, Worrall and Brereton (below) have been the subject of Premier League interest this year and, if they continue to impress, expect speculation to intensify.
Defensive deficiencies
Only bottom-of-the-table Rotherham United conceded more goals in the Championship last season than Forest’s 72. And long-term defensive issues cannot be solved overnight, particularly if you go through the summer without signing a single centre-half.
And it won’t have passed Forest fans by that no club in the top half have conceded as many goals as Warburton’s high flyers (8) in the opening five games of the season, although nearly half of those came in a dramatic 4-3 win at Brentford.
Matt Mills and Michael Mancienne are never a million miles away from a mistake and, while youngster Jordan Smith has impressed in goal, the lack of an experienced shot-stopper remains a concern.
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