Steve Cooper's bullish view on Nottingham Forest's testing schedule that includes Manchester United

Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper is refusing to be bogged down by a brutal opening month of the Premier League season that involves a trip to Old Trafford.

Forest face Arsenal at the Emirates on the opening weekend before away trips to Manchester United and Chelsea inside the three weeks after. Their arrival in M16 on Saturday, August 26, will see them take on a Reds side who beat them four times in all competition last season without conceding a goal.

Erik ten Hag has since spent more than £160million on new transfers - once Rasmus Hojlund's £72m arrival is confirmed - while Arsenal and Chelsea have also enjoyed a summer of major investment. But rather than curse his luck, Cooper insists the big games are an opportunity for an early upset.

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"Welcome back to the Premier League," Cooper joked on TalkSPORT. "You look at it in two ways. I mean, first of all, we'll take it game by game. It's look at the first block of games and who we have to play, but we've got to take it game by game.

"What we've got to do more than anything is have belief in achieving in every single game because if we don't believe, then nobody else is going to. So you can look at all of these things in two ways.

"You can look at it with fear or you could look at it with ambition and motivation to try and do something. Maybe [something] that's not expected on a particular day. And that's the brilliance of sport, isn't it?

"So, there's always something achievable. We have work to do, there's no doubt about that. And then when that season starts with