He told me we'd have reinforcements in the summer and go for it. If we can scramble into the play-offs that would be great'. The owner said to me 'don't worry about this season. If I'd known that was all I would get then I wouldn't have bothered, particularly being a club so close to my heart. 'I'm not so sure 19 games in charge is any real criteria. 'I said to the owner I just wanted 18 months to do so. It was a long time since the club had been in the big league and all I wanted to do was get them promotion.

I'd had the opportunity a number of times before that, including the previous year, but I thought this would be the time. 'I came back to try and get promotion, simple as that. 'To have 19 games in charge of a club where I spent ten years as a player, it doesn't sit comfortably with you,' he told the Garibladi Red podcast while discussing his new autobiography On Days Like These ahead of a book signing in Nottingham on Saturday. READ MORE: Nottingham Forest confirm World Cup plans with two friendlies announced READ MORE: Striker transfer, Gustavo Scarpa's Nottingham Forest status and a rival for Jesse Lingard O'Neill is one of the Miracle Men, but his return to the club as manager in January 2019 heralded a final chapter to his Forest story which still rancours, even if O'Neill jokes about the manner of his successor being announced now having felt owner Evangelos Marinakis would give him longer. It was an inauspicious end to an inauspicious stint in the hotseat once occupied by Brian Clough, the man he won a league title and two European Cups under.

Sabri Lamouchi would soon be placing family photos on the desk which had been O'Neill's for just five months as a 19-game spell in charge came to an end in the summer of 2019. Martin O'Neill was still in his office at the City Ground when the new Nottingham Forest manager was announced.

Return to Me by Morgan O'Neill