Steve Cooper explains Nottingham Forest selection call from win over Birmingham

Nottingham Forest came away victorious this weekend beating Birmingham City 2-0 to further boost their Championship promotion hopes. 

Keinan Davis scored the opening goal for his side five minutes into the game before Scott McKenna secured the three points in the 79th minute.

Forest boss Steve Cooper kept an unchanged side for the third game in a row which paid off as it was also their third win in a row since returning from the international break.

However, Cooper revealed that deciding on the line-up was not easy for him as he had Joe Lolley, Lewis Grabban and Sam Surridge fit again who have all done well off the bench in recent weeks.

Discussing his line-up, Cooper told Nottinghamshire Live: “I toyed with whether to make changes, because of it being a three-game week. The Stoke game [a 2-2 draw in February] was in my head a little bit, because we didn’t play so well that day and that was a three-game week.

“But I decided to go with momentum. I decided to go with connections on the pitch at this particular time. I don’t know whether it proved to be right, but we certainly got the result we needed.

“It was tough. It was a dilemma. At the start of the week, I thought I would make changes at some stage. And probably, if it had gone well, it would have been this one.

“But I slept on it and decided to go with momentum. It’s worked in terms of the result. The performance was, in general, good but we could have been better at times. We’ve got the points. We’ve got a strong squad. Everyone is fit and able. We move on.”

The final result sees Nottingham Forest now sit third in the league putting them in a very strong position for the play-offs and with the momentum building, there is no doubt they will continue to have a strong