Defender Steve Cook admits Nottingham Forest dug themselves a deeper hole with “unacceptable” defending against Leicester City.
A miserable evening at the King Power Stadium saw the Reds fall to a fifth defeat on the spin, being thumped 4-0 and dropping to the bottom of the table as a result. It leaves head coach Steve Cooper’s job under severe threat, while other key figures could also depart as owner Evangelos Marinakis considers making sweeping changes.
But Cook says the players have to take their share of the blame for a poor performance against the Foxes. And he has called for unity, in a bid to arrest a dismal run of form.
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“The way we conceded goals and defended was unacceptable. The individuals that were on the pitch have to take responsibility,” said the centre-back, who captained the side on Monday night and was one of only three of last season's promotion-winning squad to be included in the starting XI, alongside Scott McKenna and Brennan Johnson.
“This is the Premier League so we need to stick together and stick together as a club and demand more from each other. Against Aston Villa on Monday we have to put in a performance to dig us out of this hole which is slowly getting bigger.
“We are eight games in, we are a new squad and I feel like there were some opportunities for us at Leicester that looked positive. We need to find them in the game and analyse them and then go again.”
The visitors found themselves 3-0 down after a damaging first half against their near-neighbours. After Taiwo Awoniyi missed a good chance to open the scoring, Leicester bagged two in the space of two minutes through James Maddison and Harvey Barnes.
Maddison found the net again before the break, and although there was an improvement from Cooper’s men in the second half, Patson Daka came off the bench to rub salt in a very sore wound by rounding off the scoring. Forest have a run of seven league games and one FA Cup tie - starting with next week’s clash at home to Villa - before the action pauses again in November for the World Cup.
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