Exclusive: Steve Cooper and Ryan Yates on Nottingham Forest’s bid to avoid ‘second-season syndrome’ in Premier League

“The moment you take the foot off the gas or take anything for granted is the moment this league smashes you right in the face.”

Steve Cooper is under no illusions as he prepares to take Nottingham Forest into their second season back in the Premier League. Once the golden team of European football in the late 1970s and early 80s in the heyday of Brian Clough, the club are now fighting to become an established force in the top-flight once more.

Speaking exclusively to TNT Sports ahead of Forest’s opening game of the new season against Arsenal on Saturday, manager Cooper and long-serving midfielder Ryan Yates opened up on the club’s high-risk strategy after promotion from the Championship and their thoughts on so-called ‘second season syndrome’.

Forest’s return to the Premier League was quite an adventure.

Some 30 new players were shoehorned into the squad across the summer and winter transfer windows, including former Manchester United star Jesse Lingard and ex-Real Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas. They had a difficult start to the season and sat bottom after 10 games, then followed a promising spell either side of the Qatar World Cup with an untimely winless 10-game run to leave them in 19th place in April. However, three wins and two draws from their final six games – including a 1-0 win over Arsenal – ensured there was a happy ending.

“In my 20+ years of professional coaching, last season was the toughest coaching challenge without any shadow of a doubt. So many new players and going into the Premier League, and trying to not just compete but survive. It was a unique challenge,” Cooper tells TNT Sports.

“You can’t compare what we did last year to anything that had gone before. How we went about it was a completely unique way, so that we did overcome some challenges and stay in the Premier League ended up being really satisfying and rewarding. But we know we’ve got to try and improve and that’s really where my focus is.”

After the chaos of the last two transfer windows, Forest have been quiet by comparison this summer.

Anthony Elanga and Chris Wood are the highest-profile of the four arrivals, from Manchester United and Newcastle United respectively, while goalkeeper Matt Turner could turn out against former club Arsenal on Saturday after making the switch to the East Midlands.

“It was a bit mad. But we did need a big overhaul of players to be honest,” admitted Yates on last season.

“It did take us a bit of time to get gelled and for the manager to find his best team and system. But looking ahead to this season, a lot of the players have been here at least a season now and we all know each other really well. And without the drastic changes of players it’s only hopefully going to bode well.”

For musicians it’s the ‘difficult second album’, for students it’s the ‘sophomore slump’, and for English football teams it’s ‘second-season syndrome’. After the novelty and excitement of the first season is over, so the cliche goes, it’s harder to gee yourself up for the next campaign.

It’s a tagline that is perhaps most famously attached to Ipswich Town, who finished fifth in their first season in the Premier League in 2000-01, earning them a spot in the UEFA Cup, only to be relegated the following season. So should Nottingham Forest – and fellow promoted clubs from the Championship Class of ’22, Fulham and Bournemouth – be concerned?

“It’s definitely different to last season, that’s for sure, but the challenge is still the challenge of the Premier League. That is the toughest domestic league challenge in world football,” said Cooper.

“There’s nothing you can take for granted. You probably need to be more paranoid about trying to improve and surviving. Our mindset isn’t ‘OK, it’s our second season, we know what to do now.'”

So is ‘second-season syndrome’ actually real? To help answer that question we turned to Opta for data on all promoted clubs to grace the top flight, with particular focus on teams who swerved relegation in their first year.

Since the Premier League’s inaugural season in 1992-93, 40 newly promoted teams have gone straight back down. But perhaps surprisingly, only 11 teams have been relegated in their second season (see table below), with 38 others lasting longer than two campaigns.

“For all those examples, you could also give positive examples of teams that have done well and stayed up for a number of years,” replied Cooper, when asked if he feared ‘second-season syndrome’.

“So we would be more interested in being positive. We’re very aware of how difficult it’s going to be, but we would rather be here having a go at it than not, and that’s something we’ve got to look forward to.”

Fortunately for Forest – and Fulham and Bournemouth – data from the past 11 Premier League seasons suggests that teams that avoid relegation in year one actually improve, on average, in their second crack at the English top-flight.

Nottingham Forest had the worst away record of any team in the division last season, picking up just eight points – and only one win – from 19 games on the road.

“To be honest, away from home I don’t think it could get any worse than it did last season. So that’s something we really want to address and start putting in bigger, better performances against these teams,” said Yates.

“It’s the second season. We don’t want to be going to these top teams and thinking ‘we’re already beat’. We want to really stamp our authority on the game and show that we have got Premier League experience throughout the team.”

By contrast, the City Ground became a fortress as last season went on, with Forest picking up an impressive 30 points at home – the 10th best record in the division.

But while Cooper acknowledged that his side’s away form must improve, he was hesitant to get comfortable with his side’s performances at home.

“The home form is obviously something we’re going to work hard to try and maintain. The thought of ‘we’re at home and we’re going to get a result’ gives me the shivers really, because that’s the moment you know we’ve got the wrong culture,” he said.

“At the same time, there’s an obvious challenge that we have to improve away from home as well. We’ve just got to aim to do better at both. I’m always one who wants to face up to things that haven’t gone as they should, it’s easy to talk about positive things and ignore the bad things. I think that speaking candidly about things that haven’t gone well is really important.”

According to Opta, Nottingham Forest are fourth favourites to be relegated to the Championship – with only Luton Town, Sheffield United and Bournemouth faring worse in their predictor model (as of August 8).

Asked about expectations for the season and the prospect of another relegation battle, Yates said: “That’s the thing you don’t want to happen. That’s what we got drawn into last season.

“We haven’t thought of too many long-term targets. But just that desire to improve every single day is what we’re focused on.”

He continued: “I just think the ceiling of where we can get to… I think that’s why we don’t have much of a target for anything.

“I just think at home we turned the City Ground into a bit of a fortress towards the backend of last season and if we can continue with that, and also be more solid and have a good mentality away from home, I think there’s a huge ceiling for us and that’s really exciting.”

Forest fans can also take solace from the fact none of TNT Sports’ experts thought they would go down when asked for their pre-season predictions – a 10-strong group that included Rio Ferdinand, Peter Crouch and Joe Cole…

Arsenal v Nottingham Forest will be live on TNT Sports 1 from 11.00am on Saturday, August 12.

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