Steve Cooper confident Forest will win battle to add Steve Cook to squad

Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper still expects to be able to register defender Steve Cook despite the Premier League rejecting the request to add him to their 25-man squad.

Central defender Cook was left out of Forest’s revised squad list at the end of the January transfer window but injuries to Scott McKenna and Willy Boly at Fulham last week left them with just two fit central defenders.

The club applied to the Premier League to be able to add the 31-year-old to their list, but the governing body said no.

Forest, who drew 1-1 with champions Manchester City on Saturday, have appealed the decision and Cooper expects his club to win.

“We applied and it got rejected, so now we’ve appealed,” he said. “We can’t understand why it’s been rejected, looking at the rules and some things which have gone on in previous years. We’re hopeful the appeal is successful.

“When you read the rules and you look at it, then yes, we were surprised (it got rejected). Maybe I shouldn’t have sounded as confident as I did, but it’s happened before on many occasions.

“There’s a lot of things I could say, but I’m not going to.

“Hopefully we will get the written reasons from the Premier League. If it’s come today, I’ve not seen them.

“We’ll remind them of the rules they wrote and hopefully we’ll be OK with it.

“Fingers crossed. Hopefully, they stick to the rules and we’ll be OK.”