1987–88 Nottingham Forest F.C. season
season of football team
The 1987–88 season was Nottingham Forest's 123rd year in existence and 12th consecutive season in the First Division. Also the club competed in the FA Cup and League Cup.
Summary
The season was, surprisingly, a decent campaign for Clough, with the club finishing third in the league despite losing several players during summer, but they did not play in the UEFA Cup the following season due to the ban on English clubs in Europe after the Heysel Stadium disaster. They finished 17 points behind champions Liverpool, who lost just twice all season (one of them against Forest on 2 April) and for much of the campaign looked uncatchable.
Forest lost just seven times in the league in 40 games, and lost only twice at City Ground, but a few disappointing draws against relatively unfancied sides including Charlton and Luton led to crucial points being dropped and prevented them from mounting a serious threat to Liverpool.
New arrivals for Clough were coming from the Youth team such as: Steve Chettle, Steve Locker, Gareth Price, Terry Wilson and Billy Stubbs, only to be Terry Wilson the one who clinched a spot as starter. Also, the club transferred in Gary Crosby, Tommy Gaynor, Nigel Jemson and Garry Parker in a clear sign of austerity for this season.
Meanwhile, Clough transferred out several starters such as: Ian Bowyer, Gary Mills, Garry Birtles, Fairclough and Johnny Metgod. In FA Cup the squad reached the semifinals for the first time ever in the "Clough era" being eliminated by Liverpool F.C. After rejected to play the first two editions (1985–86 and 1986–87) the club accepted to participate in the Full Members' Cup this 1987–88 campaign only to be eliminated on Round Three by Reading.
Squad
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply.
“1987–88 Nottingham Forest F.C. season” enters the record as season of football team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nottingham, Forest and season can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q73902952. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “1987–88 Nottingham Forest F.C. season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.