Walker added on the importance ofkeeping a loyal and passionate group of supporters onside, as they have a crucial role to play whilechasing down collective goals: “Forest is one of those clubs where, over the last 25-30 years, when the fans are behind the team, the team will always do well. The minute there's negativity, any negativity in the crowd, the team seems to drop down.
“It's funny, really, because we had the most miserable crowd in the world when we were playing. If you're not winning 2-3, they start booing you! Brian Cough teams, he only stood for players that had real high moral courage. Sometimes, I had thoughts of, ‘I don't think he's bothered if I'm good, just as long as I've got enough bottle to go and do what he wants me to do’. So, he started with that, his team. He wasn't bothered.
“You kind of ignored the crowd a little bit when they weren't with you. I always remember playing, I think it was QPR, we were 4-0 up. The last 10 minutes we were just keeping the ball. Our fans were booing because we didn't go and get a fifth. You think, ‘hold on here’. But, honestly, the European boys had set the standards. So, I suppose, we were trying to keep to their standards and then we set our own standards.
“I've noticed over the last 30 years that the crowd played the most important part. When we first came up and we stayed up, arguably, we were in the bottom two teams in the league, in terms of ability. But, we had the best fans and our fans kept us up single-handedly.
“They sang when we sometimes had 25% possession at home. And they were singing like we were 3-0 up. We nicked the odd draw. We nicked one from Man City one time. And I thought to myself, ‘them fans are unbelievable’.
“So, hopefully, if you can buy a nice signing at the start and that gives the fans a positive, they start being positive for the team rather than thinking, ‘oh, we've lost a player and da-da-da’. And it's like a snowball effect. We start with two, three, four good results and we'll go from there. If we start well, we'll go from there.”