Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper has signed a new contract with the club until 2025.
Cooper, 42, led the club to promotion into the Premier League last season but his team are bottom after eight games.
There were doubts over his role after a 4-0 defeat by Leicester City on Monday but it was decided he would remain in charge.
“It puts clarity on speculation. No one had ever questioned how much I love it here and want to be here,” Cooper said.
“If there is talk about that it can stop. It doesn’t mean we are going to win the next match and everything is going to be OK,” he added.
“It has put an end to the questioning and that is great.”
A statement from the City Ground club said they were “delighted” to announce Cooper’s new deal.
“It is now important that our focus is solely on football,” the statement added.
“As a group we are all concentrated and will do everything we can to help the team move up the league table and once again demonstrate our qualities that led us to the Premier League.”
Cooper was appointed Forest manager in September 2021 and took them back to the top flight for the first time since 1999 at the end of his first season in charge.
He then spent £145m on 21 players in the summer transfer window.
Despite the heavy spending, Forest have won just once in the league this season, with the defeat at the King Power Stadium their fifth in a row.
Analysis
Colin Fray, BBC Radio Nottingham
The news from the City Ground comes as a surprise, but a welcome surprise. It is rare for a football club to offer an under-pressure manager real backing and support.
Certainly, it will come as a welcome surprise to the vast majority of Nottingham Forest fans, who have backed the head coach in any way they can over the past few days – from singing his name loudly when 3-0 down at Leicester, to inundating social media with messages of support.
Whether fan power has helped to sway this decision is hard to gauge, but it has undoubtedly been difficult for the club to ignore this week.
The feeling from a significant number of those fans has been that, even if the worst happens this season and Forest return to the Championship, Cooper is the best man to lead them back up. And like Burnley and Norwich did with Sean Dyche and Daniel Farke respectively, perhaps this is an indication feelings at the City Ground are now similar towards their head coach.
The statement from the club suggests they are together as a group and determined to move up the table.
Monday’s game at home to Aston Villa always felt like it would be ‘Steve Cooper appreciation night’. This news won’t change that.
However difficult the current spell is, perhaps now fans can look forward to more of those famous celebratory Cooper fist pumps in the future.
