Savage appointed Forest Green manager
Savage, who played for Leicester, Derby, Blackburn and Birmingham among others during his career, has been managing non-league side Macclesfield FC since 2024.
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Cotterill's departure from the National League club was confirmed on Thursday, after the side missed out on promotion through the play-offs last season.
"I feel I have an opportunity to develop a squad to create an attacking brand of football - an aggressive form of football to try and get Forest Green back into the EFL," Savage said in a club statement.
"I want a fast, exciting style but the most important thing is to win games."
Forest Green finished third in the National League last season but were beaten by seventh-placed Southend in the play-offs on penalties, to miss out on a place in the Wembley final.
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Savage links up with former Wales team-mate Mark Bowen at the Bolt New Lawn, who was appointed Forest Green's director of football last month. They have not disclosed the length of his contract.
His son, Charlie Savage, also had a spell on loan at Forest Green during the second half of the 2023-24 campaign, scoring one goal in 15 games.
The appointment is the 50-year-old's first in management in the top five tiers of English football.
However, last season he won promotion to the National League North with Macclesfield - where he has had an association since 2020 - during his first campaign in charge, with the club clinching the Northern Premier League Premier Division title with six games to spare.
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Savage said at the time it would take "an awful lot" for him to leave for another club.
A Macclesfield statement said the departure of Savage was "disappointing" but that he leaves with "our very best wishes and eternal gratitude for everything that he has done for our football club".
Savage won the first of his 39 caps for Wales in 1995 after beginning his playing career at Manchester United, although he failed to break into the first team at Old Trafford.
He went on to play more than 600 games across the EFL and Premier League in a 17-year career, which began at Crewe, before he signed for Leicester in 1997, where he played more than 200 games and won the League Cup.
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He played for Birmingham before joining Blackburn in a deal worth £3m in 2005 and ended his career at Derby in 2011.
Aged 45, Savage made a brief one-game comeback for non-league outfit Stockport Town in 2019 but has predominantly been working as a media pundit.
Savage becomes Forest Green's seventh manager since 2022, following Rob Edwards, Ian Burchnall, Duncan Ferguson, David Horseman, Troy Deeney and Cotterill.
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