Pundit Simon Jordan says Nottingham Forest should stick with Steve Cooper as manager, whatever happens this season.
Friday night’s loss to Fulham was the second game in a row where the Reds have thrown away a lead at the City Ground. And the 3-2 reverse made it four defeats on the spin, leaving them second-bottom in the Premier League table, with a fortnight’s break before they are back in action.
Cooper has acknowledged the challenges which have come with a dressing room overhaul involving 22 summer signings. Getting the group to gel is taking time.
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TalkSPORT pundit Jordan says Forest have to be “realistic” about how they will get on in their first year back in the top-flight for more than two decades. And he believes even if the worst happens, Cooper remains the right man for the job.
“Steve Cooper should not be under any real threat, because you have to be realistic about it. What you may want and what you get may be two different things,” he said.
“The challenge, for me, is the rationale, the logic, the emotivity of spending £150m will take away the gratitude you might have for the guy who took you out of this 23-year dip of being outside the Premier League. You forget he is someone who did what other managers couldn’t do for 23 years and got you up.
“Steve Cooper doesn’t deserve currency for ever. But he certainly deserves a certain amount of time.
“That means a significant amount of time. And I would suggest it means - unless there is an absolute wheels coming off - the preparedness to accept relegation, to come back up again with this manager, because I don’t think Steve Cooper is doing too much wrong.
“Nobody wants to accept anything along those lines, but you have to be realistic about things. You don’t plan to do that. The manager didn’t ask him (owner Evangelos Marinakis) to spend £150m.”
When it was put to him that Marinakis might not feel the same way about possibly dropping back down to the Championship after a substantial summer outlay, Jordan added: “This is the challenge, this is my point - I think that Marinakis won’t accept that.”
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