Head coach Steve Cooper says he pays no attention to critics who have already tipped Nottingham Forest for an immediate return to the Championship.
Plenty of pundits have piled in amid the Reds’ difficult start to life back in the Premier League. And last weekend’s 5-0 rout at Arsenal provided more fuel for those predicting this season will end in relegation.
Ahead of taking on Brentford at the City Ground this afternoon, Forest are bottom of the table with nine points. However, in a tight division, they are still within touching distance of those above them, with a three-point gap to 17th-placed Southampton.
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Cooper shuts out any outside noise as he focuses on how to spark an upturn in fortunes. But that has always been the case, regardless of how results have been going.
Asked if talk of the Reds being candidates to go down annoys him, the Welshman said: "I don't listen to that. I would go crazy if I listened to it all.
"Good, bad, indifferent stuff… the reality is we are in a really negative league position. I’ll openly talk about trying to improve our position.
"We've just got to focus on what it takes to get out of the situation we're in, and that's the process of improving. We're still aiming to become the team that we want to be with all the new players, so let's crack on with that process.
"We are playing Brentford next and they are a group who have been together a long while. I think there's a lot to be said for that.
"But this is the situation we're in, we're embracing it and we're trying to thrive on it. I'm liking my day-to-day work with the players, what they are giving me, what they are giving each other and themselves.
"What we've got to try to do is build a consistency from the work; a continuity that allows us to be able to go, 'this is what we want, lads', and then however we do in a game, compare it back - good or bad - to understand this is how we want to play, this is how we want to work, these are the expectations from themselves and each other.
“And then once we commit to that - and of course we are tweaking it along the way - that's when you probably go, 'okay, we're looking like the team we want to be now'. But it still doesn't mean you are going to win every game, as we see with every other team.”
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