Spend any time at Nottingham Forest’s Nigel Doughty Academy and you need to be prepared for one thing: handshakes. A lot of them.
Forest believe they have one of the most innovative academies in England, one at the forefront of data research and in which they have invested millions of pounds to provide the next generation with a Premier League-quality environment to learn and grow.
Amid all that, old-fashioned values remain, which is why the under-18 squad are instructed that, whenever they see a visitor at the training ground, they should offer a handshake and a friendly greeting.
On the day The Athletic visits, training is paused briefly for a drinks break, during which a queue of players quickly forms by the side of the pitch to offer handshakes, fist bumps and to ask, “How are you?” You briefly feel like visiting royalty.
That desire to develop decent people has long been a tradition at Forest: Ryan Yates, Brennan Johnson and Joe Worrall emerged as humble, grounded characters under Gary Brazil, the much respected former academy director who left last year.
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There is another tradition that stretches back to October 1941. That was the last time a Forest matchday squad did not include at least one player who had been a youth-team player — more than 4,000 games and roughly 850 young players ago. It is a remarkable record, chief among the selling points when Forest convince parents and players they should sign.
The calibre of talent the academy has produced is a selling point, too. In recent years, Forest have raised more than £100million ($130.7m) from the sale of academy products, including Matty Cash (to Aston Villa), Ben Osborn (Sheffield United), Ben Brereton Diaz (Blackburn Rovers), Oliver Burke (RB Leipzig), Johnson (Tottenham Hotspur) and Worrall (Burnley). Most played a significant role in the team before they departed.
This season, club captain Yates is the only academy product who is a first-team regular, although defender Zach Abbott, 18, has become a valued part of Nuno Espirito Santo’s senior group.
“That record will not end on our watch,” says Craig Mulholland, Forest’s head of football development and talent management. “Yatesy is flying the flag for us but should he get injured or suspended, we need to make sure there is somebody else.
“It is massive. What a story. But we must continue to have that story to tell. It is in the Forest DNA.”
Craig Mulholland is looking for the next ‘Yatesy’ (Nottingham Forest)
Just a mile or so along the bends of the River Trent from Forest’s stadium is the Nigel Doughty Academy.
It does not sit on the water in the same way as the City Ground, the setting is not quite as picturesque. The entrance is concealed among a small estate of well-kept bungalows, whose owners will have become accustomed to the occasional football landing in their back gardens.
Behind those homes, the training ground opens up into a wide expanse of greenery where there is a constant buzz of activity. It is a pleasant environment, but it is designed for hard work.
The complex has changed dramatically since Steve Cooper’s side were promoted via the Championship play-offs in 2022. Forest have installed new offices, treatment rooms, classrooms and synthetic pitches — indoor and out — among a general facelift that required a seven-figure investment.
Building a new training ground is part of Evangelos Marinakis’ master plan for the club, but that will come after work to expand the City Ground’s capacity to 42,000, the next major priority. The ultimate ambition is to raise it to 50,000.
Yet Forest cannot afford to stand still in the meantime.
“What made Brian Clough successful was that he was always ahead of his time,” Mulholland says of Forest’s European Cup-winning manager. “If you want to be genuine to his traditions, we need to be ahead of our time now. How can we be disruptive and innovative? How can we use data? How can we push the boundaries? If we can capture all of that, we can create something special.”
Promotion to the Premier League has raised the first-team bar for Abbott and his peers, but strengthening the squad is no longer the only measure of a successful academy. As Mulholland puts it, “You also want a Brennan Johnson you can sell for a lot of money.”
That is a reference to last year’s £47.5m sale of Johnson to Tottenham, which enabled Forest to reinvest in the team.
“Where can we give ourselves a point of difference when it comes to being innovative, pushing the market and getting to a point where people are asking, ‘What the hell are Forest doing now?’?” Mulholland asks.
“We are talking about identity. Forest have built a wonderful reputation for developing talent but let’s not pat ourselves on the back, we need to keep pushing to be the best we can be.”
Mulholland wants to keep pushing the academy (Courtesy of Nottingham Forest)
When the first team travelled to Murcia for a pre-season training camp in July, the entire ‘B team’ (Forest’s equivalent of their reserve or under-21s team) squad went too, something that hasn’t happened in recent years.
Under Nuno, the B team’s formation, style and mentality align with how he wants his first team to play. They generally train at the same time as the first team, close enough to see them work. That is intended as a motivational tool, showing players where they could be if they work hard, and to create a sense of unity.
It is a mentality that previous managers have used but the attention to detail and the perceived value of such things have gone up a level under the watchful eye of Mulholland, Nuno and chief football officer Ross Wilson.
“Being together in Spain meant all the coaches could sit and chat to each other about style of play, methodology, how they wanted to do things,” says Mulholland. “It also allowed the young players to sit on the same plane as Morgan Gibbs-White and to see how he stayed hydrated while travelling. That is gold dust for a young player.
“From the under-18s down to the younger age groups in the academy, it is about having a blueprint that creates players for the future. When you get to the B-team level, it is about aligning things to the first team. First-team coaches will change, that is inevitable. We cannot change the entire ethos of the academy every time the coach changes but the B team does need to change with the first team. The ethos always needs to be aligned.”
Every day, Nuno’s assistant Rui Pedro Silva will have conversations with Andy Reid, the former Forest midfielder who oversees the progress of the under-18s, about who is the next prospect. At the training ground, Mulholland’s office is opposite Nuno’s. Most of the offices of key figures sit in one corridor. People talk.
There is a sociable atmosphere in the canteen, where conversations are had over lunch about who is training well and who might merit a chance. This kind of chat led to midfielder Ben Perry getting a last-minute call-up to the first-team squad for the Carabao Cup game against Newcastle United in August when Yates fell ill.
The academy’s lead under-18 coach is Lewis Grabban. He scored 56 goals in 149 appearances during four seasons at Forest and was part of the side that won the Championship play-offs in 2021-22, but the focus of his role now is very different. Forest’s attitude is that there are only two teams who have to win: the men’s first team and the women’s first team. Otherwise, it is all about player development, including within the under-18 side he coaches.
Forest believe that having such former players on their staff is vital. Along with Reid and Grabban, Julian Bennett, who won Forest’s player-of-the-season award when they earned promotion to the Championship in 2008, is a foundation phase coach at the academy and Wes Morgan, the long-serving defender who went on to win a Premier League title with Leicester City, is a scout. They understand the heartbeat of the club.
Andy Reid is among the staff helping players progress (Nottingham Forest)
Gone are the days when one man would decide a young player’s future. Now at least 12 people will offer their daily view on a player’s development. Every player is given an individual plan but for those singled out as having the potential to be the next Johnson or Yates, Forest go further.
“We have something called the ‘TPPP’ — the talented player performance programme,” says Mulholland. “There are some players who will be identified as high-potential talents. It is our job to really push them. If we have the next Brennan Johnson coming through, we need to accelerate his learning. We delve deeper.
“Key aspects such as psychology, nutrition, performance, coaching, health and wellbeing, analysis and pathway are presented in a tailored performance dashboard. These reports will show if there are any areas where we need to push that kid, to prevent any barriers to him becoming a first-team player.
“We do wellbeing questionnaires every morning and the players wear Oura Rings, which monitor their heart rate. We know their stress and anxiety levels, 24 hours a day. They download that every night and our psychologist and wellbeing team can monitor it and see, for example, if a player is not sleeping well before games.”
Central to it all is a constant assessment of their progress.
“In years gone by, a player would come in and he would sit with his coach, or perhaps somebody in my role, and they would give their opinion on him,“ says Mulholland. “My opinion on its own is not relevant. What matters is Nottingham Forest’s opinion. If you watch a game this weekend, you will have cognitive bias towards a certain type of player. There will be a certain type of player that we all like. We’ve taken that away.
“For every player, at least 12 different people will score them on a metric sheet, via an app, which will have a whole lot of characteristics. How does he receive the ball? How does he release it? How does he escape pressure moments?
“They will watch the players regularly in training and games. To use an example, an under-18s player would be assessed by Lewis, assistant coach Sam Darlow, Owen Coyle, who is responsible for all TPPP players, and Andy Reid. I see all the under-18 games, so I will do it, Chris McGuane (head of academy) will do it, the sports scientists and some of the scouting team will as well. You get a clear picture of what they are good at and where they need to develop.”
An algorithm is used to take into account how players are maturing physically.
“The players with the most potential might be the ones who are the least physically developed in their group. The criteria that we assess a 13-year-old on will be weighted differently to how we would assess a 19-year-old. When they are younger, it is more about the technical side of things,” says Mulholland.
“We are trying to reduce the subjectivity and increase objectivity, but still maintain the impact of the staff we have. We have (B-team manager) Warren Joyce who developed countless players at Manchester United — he still needs to have that invaluable gut instinct on a player as well.
“If we can find the sweet spot between these things, we should be able to make good decisions, even if we will not get every one of them right.”
Warren Joyce is the B-team manager (Courtesy Nottingham Forest)
As Forest improve in the Premier League, one question is how they maintain the pathway for young players.
“There will not be more than a few players going into the first team,” says Mulholland. “But we need to make sure that there is that pathway for the special one or two. It should not be easy to get into the first team. Candidly, if you want to take Ryan Yates’ shirt off him, you are going to have to be better.
“The comparison I would make is university. When you pick a university, it is because you think that, when you come out at the other end, you have the best chance of having a top career. We want a reputation for producing top footballers and top people. We want everyone else to want our players. Our message to players and parents is that we will give them the best possible education and the best possible opportunity.“
To some observers outside of Nottingham, the fact that Forest signed 29 players during the first transfer window following promotion in 2022 was a sign of chaotic planning and recruitment. Perhaps there was an element of that but it was also necessary. Forest needed to quickly strengthen a squad that had been comprised largely of loan signings and, frankly, Championship-standard players.
With each passing transfer window, Forest’s recruitment has made more sense. The latest saw the addition of Serbia captain Nikola Milenkovic, 11-cap England international James Ward-Prowse, a potential future England international Elliot Anderson and exciting wingers Jota Silva and Ramon Sosa. Forest now possess a squad that is capable of far more than just fighting against relegation.
Forest are still keeping one eye on the next generation. If there is an exceptional 16-year-old in the academy, Forest try to ensure there will be a space for him in the first-team squad in three years. They will not overload his position and block his development, whether that pathway leads to Forest’s first team or to being sold.
“If you sign for a club like Chelsea, you would do so with your eyes open. The stats will tell you that you have very little chance of playing for their first team. But they will also tell you that you have a very good chance of getting a career playing at a high level,“ says Mulholland.
“We need something similar where players will know that, if they come here, they will have a pathway to a bright future.
“When they think about who they want to join in the Midlands, we want them to think, ‘It has to be Forest’, if they want the best chance of having a career as a professional footballer.”
Whether they make it or not, they will understand the importance of a strong handshake.
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(Top photo: Forest’s B team during their match against Dinamo Zagreb; Nottingham Forest)
