How Nottingham Forest took the ‘Chelsea approach’ to reach top four and exposed fine line between stupid and clever
AS two wise men once said, it’s such a fine line between stupid and, uh, clever.
This philosophical gem comes from the mockumentary — if you will, rockumentary — Spinal Tap, in which the David St Hubbins character is marginally brighter than bandmate Nigel Tufnel.
Back in the summer of 2022, it was Nottingham Forest cast as the idiots after bringing in 31 players to help their bid for a successful return to the English top flight.
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s £250million spree on eight stars was generally regarded as a positive sign that the new owners would do their best to keep the Blues in the style to which they had become accustomed under Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
The two clubs have moved back and forth on the stupid/clever scale in the intervening two-and-a-half years.
But if Forest end the season in the top four, and Chelsea don’t, it will be pretty clear where they stand.
That feels like a real possibility after recent results.
When Chelsea sat second for most of December, boss Enzo Maresca played it cool and insisted his side were not title contenders.
After five Premier League games without a win, Maresca’s stance now looks less like a mind game to take the pressure off his players, which hasn’t worked, and more like a frank assessment of their level.
Forest chief Nuno Espirito Santo has also preached caution, but he and his players have maintained their strong start to the season.
The battling draw against leaders Liverpool on Tuesday was the latest evidence they can mix it with the big boys and have a good chance of staying the distance.
It has been tempting to tar these clubs with the same brush, with Forest as the poor man’s Chelsea — despite owner Evangelos Marinakis being a billionaire.
When the Blues splashed out an unprecedented £300m-plus in January 2023, they firmly joined Forest in farcical, rather than fantasy, football.
Graham Potter and then Mauricio Pochettino were sacked for not making enough sense of it all.
While at Forest, Steve Cooper paid the same price in December 2023 as the club dug in for another relegation battle.
That was before Forest were docked four points for breaking profit and sustainability rules due to their 2022-23 spending.
Such a miscalculation would have looked even more stupid if they had gone down.
Chelsea’s owners dodged any penalty by selling a couple of hotels to themselves for £76.5m just before the deadline for the 2022-23 period. It showed they were clever at accounting, at least.
Last June, Forest demonstrated they were wising up about how to play the system.
Keeper Odysseas Vlachodimos made a shock journey to Newcastle, with Elliot Anderson travelling in the other direction.
Some claim Chelsea got up to similar PSR-dodging shenanigans with Aston Villa and also sold their women’s team to the owners.
As a result, it seems both clubs have avoided Premier League charges for breaking rules in the three seasons to 2023-24.
But during this campaign, Forest have not only caught up but for now overtaken the Blues where it really counts — on the pitch.
Forest are the Premier League club with the eighth highest net spend — more than £215m — in the past five seasons, despite only having been in the top flight for three of them.
But that is way behind market leaders Chelsea, with a net outlay of getting on for £800m. And Marinakis is getting much more bang for his buck than Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly.
Take goalkeepers, for instance. Really, please, take some goalkeepers, as Chelsea might have said when they had EIGHT on their books back in August.
Yet none of them — not first-choice Robert Sanchez (initial fee £25m), back-up Filip Jorgensen (£20.5m), incoming Mike Penders (£17m), nor any of out-on-loan duo Djordje Petrovic (£12.5m) and Kepa (£71.6m back in 2018, still a world record for a goalkeeper) — is as good as Forest’s stopper Matz Sels.
The Belgium international, who arrived at the City Ground for just £5m in February, made crucial saves against Liverpool and leads the race for the Golden Glove with nine clean sheets.
Sels would doubtless give credit to the defence in front of him.
Not least to Murillo, a £15m snip signed in 2023, and centre-back partner Nikola Milenkovic, who cost only £12m last summer.
Right-back Ola Aina came on a free, making left-back Neco Williams — a £17m capture in that first summer of madness — the most expensive member of Tuesday’s back four.
Chelsea have spent more than £250m on defenders alone under the current owners but have only kept two clean sheets since the start of December.
So Forest have been transformed from a Championship club into top-four contenders.
And for far less than Chelsea’s owners have spent turning the Blues from third-place finishers in May 2022, a year after they won the Champions League, to a side that faces a fight just to qualify for next season’s European showpiece.
In Spinal Tap, Tufnel patiently explains why his amplifier settings go to 11.
After Forest and Chelsea went one louder with their transfer policy, will either or both have the last laugh on their critics in May?