Their first four games produced no points. They had one from the opening seven. In many a league, that would be the prelude to the most miserable of relegations. In the Championship, Nottingham Forest then averaged more than two points a game and won promotion to the Premier League.
The alchemy of Steve Cooper feels doubly significant. As the Championship restarts, it is worth revisiting the 2016-17 season. Then, in part due to the underperformance of sizeable clubs at the higher level, many converged in the second tier. None of arguably the six largest is now in the Championship: Newcastle, Aston Villa, Leeds and Forest won promotion, in that order, while first Sheffield Wednesday and then Derby went down to League One. It prompts you to wonder if the big-city clubs will take up permanent residence at the top and footballing social mobility will be restricted to a handful of increasingly dissatisfied yo-yo clubs who lack their resources but forever have the funds to go up.
