There was only one place The i Paper’s chief football writer Daniel Storey was ending his Doing the 92 quest. Finishing somewhere else would have felt incomplete
Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 92/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here
All I wanted was there to be nothing riding on the match. You’ll have to forgive this latest display of self-absorption, but I couldn’t quite stomach another date with destiny in May with relegation on the line. Twice in two years Nottingham Forest had dealt with those. Twice they had scraped through.
Back in August, did that hope feel reasonable? Forest had sold central defender Moussa Niakhate and central midfielder Orel Mangala to Lyon and replaced them with Nikola Milenkovic for half the price and Elliot Anderson, a young man with 13 career top-flight starts. There was a realistic hope of moving up from 17th into the glorious comfort of midtable.
But Brentford (16th) would be saying the same, right? And who else would be moving down? So yes, this has been a fine season indeed. There was something on it after all.
There is a right way to approach the City Ground, walking down London Road and staying on the left-hand side of the road as you approach Trent Bridge.
That allows for the vista to open up in one moment as you step beyond the flats on Quayside Court. I am one of the least credible non-partisan witnesses, but I believe it to be the most beautiful sight in English football. Because it’s home.
Having lived south of the river in Nottinghamshire for my entire life (bar four years at university), that City Ground reveal is saved for infrequent moments: crossing the bridge after a pint at the Trent Nav, walking back after a haircut at Topknot. It’s an impromptu treat, not my staple.
But today is the final game of the season and I’m unspeakably early, so I wander over from south to north, then north to south, taking care not to spoil the non-surprise surprise on the first crossing.
We know little of how our lives will play out, but I can be sure that I will never not find joy in that view: the water Cloughie walked on and everything beyond it that he built.
Every time I walk across Trent Bridge, I am reminded of Jose Mourinho visiting Nottingham for the first time because he wanted to see the home of the two-time champions of Europe: “I walked all the way around the city and when I saw the stadium I thought: ‘Are you kidding me – this club won the European Cup? Twice? It was a nice stadium and a nice city, but it was a small place. It was the size of the stadium that really took me aback.” This city has always purported to punch above its weight.
There’s no escaping that I have spent the last nine months missing Forest’s best season since I was nine years old and my mum nicknamed me David Coleman for how little I would shut up during the game. I’d clearly have done this same deal in August, but would probably have felt a touch of pre-emptive resentment at being absent from the City Ground.
Nottingham Forest 0-1 Chelsea (Sunday 25 May)
- Game no: 92/92
- Miles: 16
- Cumulative miles: 17,686
- Total goals seen: 238
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: Being presented with a shirt before the game by Forest. One of the best days of my life
In fact, that’s not the case at all (and I don’t think that’s just a matter of self-preservation). Yes, I’ve missed the live experience. But just as a football club isn’t simply a Saturday, 3pm organisation, nor is supporting one.
You soak it up in different ways: podcasts, match reports, opinion pieces, WhatsApp debates, calls with family members about picking both wingers or keeping one back on the bench, pints with friends who support other clubs and, for almost the first time since you were legally allowed in the pub, yours isn’t the butt of the jokes.
Sometimes people miss that point. With the Premier League as a televised spectacle, you view supporters through the prism of who you see. But you can get 27,000 home fans in the City Ground and Nottinghamshire alone has a population near 850,000. Even with Notts County and Mansfield Town, you see the point: there are far more outside than in.
Nottingham has felt different this season. Or maybe we all have felt different and in doing so each changed our city in an imperceptible way that becomes noticeable in the whole.
You see more red shirts, more people watching on TV, than before. You meet people who you have never heard speak about football before and they say “What about Nuno then?” with a beaming smile, as if asking for gratitude that they have heard the good news. Gratitude quickly comes: we were always ready to talk about Nuno. And Woody. And Morgan. And Ola. And the centre-backs. And the wingers. And Matz Sels, in the middle of our goal.
I am perceived, by friends and by other supporters, as a negative Forest fan. To which I say: yeah, absolutely fair enough. You are either a football supporter that thinks of the best or one that assumes the worst and then anything else is a bonus. I’m the second guy. I know it annoys others because it annoys me.
Forest didn’t qualify for the Champions League. The second half against Chelsea was an amalgamation of everything supporters have feared for a few weeks. The players looked so physically drained that they had two options: underhit a pass or kick the ball as hard as they could and hope that worked. Against a squad that cost £1.4bn, they fell short.
But to any Forest supporter who may lean towards disappointment, think on. Your team went from 17th in one season to qualifying for Europe through their league position. They became the first team in Premier League history to double their points total from one season to the next. They slipped up at home in April and May, but they also took 33 away points.
This all hit me most at Wembley during the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City. Over the final 20 minutes, with Forest chasing the game, they introduced Jota Silva and Ramon Sosa as their attacking substitutes. City brought on Ilkay Gundogan, Phil Foden, Nico Gonzalez and Jeremy Doku. At that stage, Forest were a point behind Manchester City in the league with a game in hand. None of that was normal.
We all believe that our own club and fanbase is unique because it helps to reinforce our unity and loyalty. But I am convinced that supporting Nottingham Forest in 2025 is a psychological conundrum, particularly for those in their thirties. You have the established long-term weirdness of the glory years that (quite rightly) people of a certain age tend to never shut up about. Nor would I if I were them.
To that you can now add this short-term weirdness. Forest went from bottom of the Championship in September 2021 to European football in less than four years. They have had promotion, surviving relegation, surviving relegation and then this. They have had all the signings, the points deduction and the sacking of the manager who got them up. Things have never been calm or dull. We have not had time to process because something else has always happened first.
As a kid, I never knew what Forest’s rightful place was because we had all this history and baggage and yet were bouncing between the top and second tier until we stopped bouncing and just got worse. The same confusion applies now: where is the rightful position?
Add in our inferiority complexes and imposter syndromes and the whole thing is a brain scramble. You could meet 10 Forest fans and none would agree on reasonable expectations for next season nor Forest’s natural place in English football’s order. Winning big stuff as a smaller club changes you forever in ways you could never expect.
But know this: these are the days that you longed for and when those days come you should stretch them out as wide as you can. You were all there at Loftus Road when Forest became the first European champions to fall into the third tier. You were there for Sheffield United and Yeovil and Blackpool and Swansea in the playoffs. The only benefit of those awful evenings was that they became hindsight distractions from all the other misery that came in between.
As I walked down Gordon Road to the Avenue in West Bridgford on Sunday lunchtime, that was all that sat in my mind. If you don’t enjoy today, what are you actually doing it for other than as a representation of your addiction? If this campaign hasn’t produced unadulterated joy, which one will? Football is not a pursuit of perfection and provincial clubs don’t succeed often.
I remember standing in Nottingham’s Market Square in May 2022 and hearing Evangelos Marinakis talk of European football. It felt – it was – rampantly ambitious and now it has been realised within three years. Forest supporters know, perhaps more than any other football club, that Europe is where the magic can happen. The rebel city gets to go abroad and sing in places they have never been before.
And then they will come back home. I figure that there are two opposing conditions that provide the most joy during an experience: discovering things that you don’t know at all and reinforcing what you deeply love about the things that you know the most. It applies to almost everything in life, from restaurants to films to places to people. Most people will lean towards one extreme, but we all need both.
That’s why there was only one place I was finishing up this season, one ground and date written in pen in August. Doing it any other way would have felt incomplete. I might have missed the best season in 30 years but I would make sure that I got to help turn the lights off. We sing about the desire to be here and that’s never been more true.
Because our home grounds are homes of their own. I have walked through their doors over a longer period than any house I’ve ever lived in. We have grown up in them. We have continued friendships, forged new ones and stayed closer to family members. We have caught the eye of someone in a non-football context, not been able to place the face and then realised that they sit three rows in front with their old man and young daughter.
We have endured and enjoyed our times in them on an incessant loop that we wouldn’t change for the world apart from all the things we would. We have built up heroes and torn down villains. And we have sang and sang, because we are proud of who we follow and who we are when we’re all together following. August will be round again soon, thank God.
Daniel Storey set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article here
