Steve Cotterill was appointed as manager of Nottingham Forest on October 14 2011 to succeed former England boss Steve McClaren.

It was his seventh managerial appointment, having previously been in charge of Sligo Rovers, Cheltenham, Stoke City, Burnley, Notts County and Portsmouth.

He has had considerable success along the way, starting with Sligo where he took the League of Ireland club to a third place finish, the final of the League of Ireland Cup and then into European competition.

When he joined Cheltenham they were a Southern League club but he instantly won promotion to the Football Conference as well as going on to win the FA Trophy in 1998 and then finish runners-up in the Conference.

The following year they were Conference champions and after entering the Football League they went on to reach the fifth round of the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history. His success continued when he took Cheltenham into the third tier of English football following a play-off victory over Rushden & Diamonds in Cardiff.

Cotterill departed for Stoke in 2002 but his stay was short in the Potteries as he left to become assistant manager to Howard Wilkinson at Sunderland. That too proved to be a short-lived association and in the summer of 2004 he was appointed manager of Burnley.

He enjoyed lengthy cup runs at Turf Moor in both the League Cup and FA Cup, in which they defeated Liverpool, and stayed in Lancashire for three and a half years and after a short spell in the USA with Minnesota Thunder, he returned to English football with Notts County in February 2010.

He had rapid success at Meadow Lane as they captured the League Two title that season and he moved swiftly on to become Portsmouth manager in June of the same year.

During his time at Fratton Park he had to work under well-documented financial restraints and general uncertainty concerning the club's future but his leadership under such difficult circumstances earned him widespread acclaim.
He left Portsmouth after 16 months to take over at The City Ground.

As a player Cotterill was a striker who represented Burton Albion, Wimbledon, Brighton (on loan) and Bournemouth.

He scored 69 goals in a career spanning 142 league games but his playing days were cut short in 1995 by the second of two bad knee injuries.