Godfather Of Champions

Since Ibišević was only a target late to join, and because of his poor performance last season, his transfer fee plummeted, for the striker position that was supposed to be the most expensive, the Forest team spent only fifteen million euros, or about fourteen million pounds. Taking into account the costs of Bentley and Fernández and the further injection of five million pounds, the fifty-five-million-pound transfer budget was left with sixteen million.

What was sixteen million enough for?

Twain decided to bolster the right back positions. The right back position had become a common headache in the world. A good right back was currently hard to find. Real Madrid’s Sergio Ramos, Barcelona’s Dani Alves, Inter Milan’s Maicon, Arsenal’s Sagna, … were all among the best in the world. However, Nottingham Forest definitely could not buy such a player.

Twain could only start with a younger player who was less famous than them.

After a selection, he set the target for AS Monaco’s full back, Nicolas Nkoulou.

The twenty-year-old Cameroonian young player had been playing as the main force in Monaco for a season. In the 07-08 season, he went to the France Ligue 1 team, AS Monaco for a trial and received recognition from the Monaco team, which signed a contract with him. He played in the Monaco First Team in the second season. Following which, he was the mainstay in the 09-10 season.

Nkoulou could handle both the right back and center back positions. As a center back, his height of slightly less than 1.8 meters was like the fly in the ointment, but he did a good job in the right back position. He even also guest starred as the goalkeeper once when he played for the Cameroon national team. He was a “multi-faceted player.”

In fact, Nkoulou was noticed by the Nottingham Forest scouts two years ago, and the Forest team had asked him to come to England for a trial. But at that time, he chose to go to the France Ligue 1 to try his luck, instead of accepting the Forest team’s invitation.

It was not just Nottingham Forest that was optimistic about his future. Wenger’s Arsenal had been at the forefront in search of young talent from around the world and had long been interested in Nkoulou.

The two clubs made their moves at the time this summer. Nottingham Forest had a slight edge due to its previous contact with Nkoulou.

Monaco knew that they would not be able to keep a player like Nkoulou in the small team. Therefore, rather than force him to stay, it was better to sell for a good price early. Nkoulou had also expressed his desire to play in Europe’s top leagues and the France Ligue 1 was on longer able to satisfy him.

They compared Nottingham Forest’s offer to Arsenal’s and decided to raise the price of Nkoulou to twelve million pounds.

Arsenal turned down their return asking price. It was crazy that a player who was only twenty years old and had not proved himself in a European major competition to be able to sell for twelve million pounds in Wenger’s view. After all, Nkoulou was not the kind of player with a special talent like Messi, Bojan, and Wilshere. It was absolutely not worth twelve million for such a player.

Tony Twain also rejected the offer. But he sent another offer over—eight million pounds.

Monaco thought it was too low and they asked for eleven million pounds in return.

In return, the Forest team made a bid of nine million. This time, it was Allan Adams who personally flew to Monaco with the offer.

After a round of negotiations, Monaco agreed to sell Nkoulou for nine and half million pounds.

It was not known how Arsenal heard the news. They also put in an offer of nine and a half million to steal Nkoulou away.

Twain was furious about the news, which he thought Monaco had deliberately leaked out in order to keep the price higher. But unexpectedly Arsenal was also very clever and offered nine and a half million, not a cent more.

Twain’s fear was that Nkoulou would choose Arsenal over himself. Since Nottingham Forest’s promotion to the Premier League, he had competed against Arsenal on a number of occasions in the transfer market and spoilt things for Wenger. But Wenger had also robbed a lot of players he had his eye on.

But this time, he beat Wenger.

Nkoulou was more familiar with and knew Nottingham Forest better. Not to mention it was not the first time Nottingham Forest had come to him. He almost became a member of the Forest team at the time. Emotionally, he preferred Nottingham Forest and not Arsenal, which was known throughout the world for placing young players in important positions.

Nkoulou was a sentimental man, and Tony Twain heavily played the emotional card. He eventually managed to get Nkoulou to sign the contract.

The club then announced that the twenty-year-old right back, Nicolas Nkoulou had transferred to Nottingham Forest for a fee of nine and a half million pounds and signed a five-year deal.

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While signing new players, Nottingham Forest also sold their players to other teams. After all, one way to control costs was to control the salary budget. If there were too many First Team players, paying salaries alone was a big burden for the club.

Sun Jihai was the first to leave the team. Twain had had already given him a heads up before the end of the season that the Forest team would not renew his contract even when his contract expired. He wanted to hurry up and find his next team before his one-year contract expired.

Sun Jihai was an understanding person. He also knew that he did not have the strength to stay on in such a championship title-oriented team. He would love to stay in the English Premier League, but the reality was brutal. Until July, all the Premier League clubs rumored to be interested in him were still stuck at the rumor stage.

The agent told him that there were now two paths ahead for him. One was to return to China to play football and enjoy life in retirement for the last two years. The second was to lower his expectations, go to the English Football League Championship to play for two more seasons, and then retire.

Sun Jihai did not intend to return to China. He even refused the invitation from his former owner, Dalian which trained and developed him. He chose to go to the English Football League Championship and signed a two-year deal with Sheffield United. He would turn thirty-five when his contract with Sheffield United expired. He would be offered a one-year contract extension if he remained in a good form and ensured a steady number of appearances.

Sheffield United paid the Forest team a transfer fee of one million pounds in order to get Sun Jihai. Although Sun Jihai was already thirty-two years old, he was still a “championship level player” who had been with the team to win two UEFA Champions League titles and one league championship title. He was the Asian player with the most top European honors in Asia. Park Ji-sung at Manchester United was second.

Chimbonda had thought that Nkoulou’s arrival would lead to his departure. Although he had just renewed his contract with the Forest team, it was only one way to prevent the players from leaving on a free transfer of players after their contracts expired. Twain came to him first one day after training to talk with him alone and dispelled the doubts in his mind.

Twain told Chimbonda that regardless, he was a member of Nottingham Forest during the contract period and that the team needed his experience and defensive ability. Nkoulou was still young in any case and just a rotating player.

The shift in Twain’s attitude toward Chimbonda stemmed from last season. The team had been in poor form, but Chimbonda’s performance was impressive. His steady play as a right back was the team’s guarantee of a fourth-place finish in the league tournament. With Rafinha having some injuries last season and low attendance, they depended on Chimbonda alone most of the time. The older Chimbonda’s level had fallen not as fast as Twain thought, and he remained at a high-level last season.

Perhaps because of the right mentality, Chimbonda made Twain sit up and take notice again.

People said a friend in need was a friend indeed. During the team’s most difficult 07-08 and 08-09 seasons, Chimbonda helped the team with his steady play. Now it was time for the team to repay Chimbonda. The team offered him a new contract last winter, and this summer, Twain told him he could play here with confidence till his retirement—when that contract expired, Chimbonda could no longer physically play even if he wanted to.

Twain was planning a long-term goal—he wanted to develop as much as possible the players’ sense of belonging and loyalty to the team. Unless it was someone he wanted to get rid of, he wanted these players to still have feelings for the team even when they were older. Like the other big teams, they had a unique culture to retain their own players.

Twain hoped that in a few years’ time, Nottingham Forest would produce a Paulo Maldini, Ryan Giggs, Gerrard…

In addition to Sun Jihai, Martin Petrov was the second Forest player to leave in the summer.

Twain paid ten million euros plus an exchange of players to bring in Ibišević, and the player who was traded was Martin Petrov.

Hoffenheim was interested in Petrov and Nottingham Forest was interested in Ibišević. The two sides found common ground in this regard. In fact, this was the main content of the talks during the meeting between Twain and Rotthaus.

Martin Petrov was mentally prepared to leave the Forest team and going to Hoffenheim was not bad for him. Hoffenheim had now shed their “newly promoted team” label and become a mid-level team in the Bundesliga. Playing for that kind of team was not insulting for him. Moreover, the Hoffenheim boss had the money to meet his demands in terms of pay package.

After the agreement between the clubs was reached and the player had also reached an agreement with the team, the deal was successfully settled.

As precisely stated before, Nicolás Millán and Victor Moses were loaned out by the club to two newly promoted Premier League teams, Southampton and Norwich City.

Twain hoped they could rely on their strength to work hard, gain valuable experience and receive training in unfamiliar teams to grow into the players he needed.

Like them, there was also Adriano Moke. He was loaned out by the club to another Premier League club, Blackburn Rovers. Since selling Bentley, Blackburn Rovers had been looking for another player on the right wing. They were interested in the technically excellent Moke. On the principle that Twain wanted the young man to receive more training and experience more competitions, so he agreed to Blackburn Rovers’ request to loan Moke.

Whereas Moke himself was no longer that proud and arrogant youth who was disgusted that he was loaned out and had to play in the reserve team. He also believed that a loan to play in tournaments at the moment was the best move to improve his level. He agreed to play for Blackburn Rovers for a season.

This was basically what happened this summer. Twain did not carry out a purge on the lineup because there was no need. His players did a great job last season. Otherwise he would not have the chance to return to Europe in a year’s time. The players brought in were just to complement a few positions which were slightly lacking in strength such as the two wingers and a striker. The preservation of the overall structure of the team was the main reason why Twain was filled with confidence for the new season. He was most familiar with this group of players. He understood the characteristics of each of them and knew how to use them well.

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Another good news that was no less happy than the signing of the new players was that van Nistelrooy was finally back on the pitch after a long recovery from surgery!

In the 15th round of the league tournament on November 29th, 2008, the Dutchman was injured in the Nottingham Forest’s home game victory of 3:1 over West Bromwich Albion. He took a full year to recover from the surgery, rather than the eight months previously reported in the media. He did not return to the team until January 2010 but spent most of his time struggling with a knee injury and was not nimble throughout. Twain did not dare to send him back on the field, not even in the reserves. He was afraid that his body could no longer stand up to the strain.

Born on July 1st, 1976, he just turned thirty-four years old.

A year and seven months after he left the team with an injury, he was finally ready to play again. He made an appearance as a substitute in the Forest team’s friendly match against the Scottish Premiership elite team, Celtic.

Twain gave him thirty minutes to play. Although he did not score, Twain and all the coaching staff were not concerned about van Nistelrooy ‘s performance, but his knee. After the game, Fleming did a medical examination of van Nistelrooy and found that there was nothing wrong with the operated knee, so everyone slightly put their minds at ease.

In a rather good mood, Twain even joked with the reporters who interviewed him the day after the game, “Our fourth signing of the summer has been confirmed!”

When the reporters asked in surprise about who the fourth Forest player was, Twain laughed and solved the mystery, “Ruud van Nistelrooy!”

Van Nistelrooy was in the starting lineup in a subsequent match against the League One team, Walsall and scored a penalty shot, which made the Forest fans cheered and celebrated.

From the looks of it, things were developing in the right direction.

Twain often joked with van Nistelrooy during training, as if it was not a relationship between a manager and a player.

The newly joined Forest players were a little surprised, but the old players would laugh and tell them, “It’s normal since Boss is that kind of guy.”

But in fact, they only got half of it right.

Twain was so close to van Nistelrooy because half of it was he had a better relationship with van Nistelrooy than the other players. The Forest team now had a lot of players, but for Tony Twain, there were not many players he could recall from his memories in his two lives.

Hierro, Albertini, Beckham, van der Sar, Ayala whom he considered were gone. Only van Nistelrooy was still in the team now.

It was as if his old friends around him had originally planned to travel together, but after traveling on the road for some time, he was focused on enjoying the scenery along the way. When he thought of the friends around him, he turned to look back but instead found that there was only one person left next to him.

It was an emotion that was hard to explain to others. It was not that a relationship which was on I paid for you, so you came to play for me.

Van Nistelrooy had two years left on his contract with Nottingham Forest and Twain hoped that van Nistelrooy would be offered another year extension after his contract expired. He would be thirty-seven years old by then.

Then when he retired at Nottingham Forest, Twain must offer van Nistelrooy the best farewell match, just as he had promised Albertini at that time.

He did not want that day to come, but he looked forward to its arrival as well.