Nottingham Forest made Premier League history on Saturday afternoon at Craven Cottage. Though not in the way Steve Cooper would have liked.
With Willy Boly and Scott McKenna both pulling up in the opening stages of that 2-0 defeat to a Willian-inspired Fulham, Forest became the first team in the competition’s history ever to substitute two players within the first seven minutes of a game, forcing January signing Felipe into a rather unexpected West London debut.
Remarkably, Nottingham Forest find themselves in a somewhat strange position of having signed 30 new players since promotion but now facing a shortage of centre-halves. Guilian Biancone will not play again this season. Moussa Niakhate is another long-term absence. Even Cheikhou Kouyate, the versatile Senegalese veteran, is out of action.
Now, with McKenna and Boly joining them on the treatment table, one suspects Erling Haaland will be counting down the seconds until kick-off at the City Ground; Manchester City arriving on the banks of the Trent this Saturday.
Loic Bade’s outstanding form at Sevilla, then, feels like a classic case of seasoning the wounds. Bade did not make a single Premier League appearance in half-a-season at Nottingham Forest; his loan deal from Rennes terminated five months ahead of schedule.
A subsequent January switch to Sevilla – even with Jorge Sampaoli’s side limping along at the wrong end of the table – might have been viewed as Bade ‘falling upwards’. But the Frenchman proving to be a colossal presence at the heart of Sevilla’s backline, the Forest fans would be forgiven for questioning exactly why Cooper seemed so reluctant to give Bade a chance.
Loic Bade a man reborn at Sevilla following Nottingham Forest exit
“The problem is that there were a lot (of players) in the team. I knew that from the start,” the former RC Lens starlet tells Ouest France. “The coach (Cooper) prefers players with experience. His choices were made based on that criteria.
“We had to find out if it was best for me to stay in Nottingham, or to find a new project. For me, it was a logical (to leave) since I saw that the coach was not counting on me.”
In his six appearances at Sevilla, Bade has found himself on the winning side four times. There has been three wins, and three clean sheets, in the club’s last four La Liga matches. In the blink of an eye, the 2020 Europa League winners have climbed from 18th to 12th.
According to La Colina de Nervion, Sevilla director Monchi is already planning to exercise the £12 million release clause in Bade’s contract; the France U21 international helping fill the void created by last summer’s departures of Diego Carlos and Jules Kounde.
Cooper might have had concerns over Bade’s relative lack of top-level experience. But the 22-year-old centre-back is proving the benefits of youthful exuberance in his new Andalusian home.
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