Steve Cooper 's future as Nottingham Forest manager is seemingly hanging in the balance due to the club's poor league position and will to stay in the Premier League at all costs.
The latest emerging lines are that Cooper will 'get one more chance', and has had his contract offer shelved for now.
Contract issues aside, there needs to be two clear questions answered by the board before any consideration is to be given over who hands Cooper his P45, or doesn't.
The first question is this, 'Are you absolutely sure that it is a problem of Cooper's making, and do the fans agree with you?'
The second question is - 'Why is he not the person best placed to turn the ship around?'.
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For me, those two questions have to be addressed with concrete confidence and authority, and I don't think they can be.
Some Reds fans may certainly have misgivings about Cooper, despite last year's heroics, but any supporter will see that this is not a situation he can be fairly blamed for.
The speed of Forest's huge overhaul of the squad was quite breathtaking, and it felt that somewhere along the lines somebody maybe needed to pull on the reins and ask what the end goal was.
I've had less dramatic transfer windows on Football Manager with an open chequebook and fuelled by a few cans of Brewdog.
I have some sympathy with the argument that X amount of players needed to leave for whatever reason, and that then meant there was a need for a suitable headcount to replace them. That is genuinely fair enough, and it is a big debate over whether Forest needed 22 new players through the door. There were 28 players who left the club this summer through loans and contracts ending, player sales and loans out..
Clearly a huge change was needed to confront the Premier League, but that wasn't just a transfer window, that is a club overhaul, and essentially a completely different identity and playing staff. Would less have been more, and less to manage?
I am not even mentioning the quality of the signings, some of those signings are very impressive. Who am I to say Mr Marinakis should have put the chequebook away? Who was Steve Cooper to suggest it may be too much? Who would anybody be to be saying, 'hang on?'.
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If you are bringing in good players, it's positive and exciting. The fever pitch surrounding the deals was exhilarating, for the club, for the fans, for everyone - it would be reckless not to give a manager time to try and throw the ingredients into the pot and dish up something decent.
Such approaches to transfer rebuilds, rarely work, and don't get me wrong, this approach may still work, I am in the group of people who hope it does as this is a crucial crossroads for Forest.
Forest were promoted last season against all the odds, because of the decision to hire Cooper, and because of the performance of the manager, as a manager of men and building an ethos and team spirit.
If you are overhauling the squad to that extent, you are creating a unique situation, that unique approach to the summer means that you have to have a unique approach to the fallout.
Usually, even with someone who had credit in the bank like Cooper, you would say that by the halfway point of the new season in the Premier League, it would be fair to judge performance and make a tough decision. To even suggest doing that after eight games is nonsensical, and unfair, and I don't think the fans will back. that. Not after the summer's sea change.
This is not to say Cooper is 100% the right man to lead the club, but he deserves much more time to try and sift through the playing squad, and learn the personalities, the nuances, and the combinations that work.
Cooper is a decent man, with loyalty and hard work in spades. That isn't enough to keep anyone in a job these days in the Premier League - but there has to be a fair crack of the whip, especially given the circumstances.
To be perfectly fair to the club, there has been no suggestion Cooper will depart, but for me it is too soon for that to be a consideration.
Hopefully, the Forest board are on the same page, they could find they are sacking more managers in the foreseeable future if they aren't.
What do you think? Tell me below
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