It is quite impressive that Steve Cooper has lasted so long at the City Ground, considering what has gone before him in the Evangelos Marinakis era. The 19-month Cooper-Nottingham Forest epoch has seen them go from relegation candidates in the Championship to the Premier League, where they are battling for survival.
In another week of behind-the-scenes chaos in the run-up to Manchester United’s visit on Sunday, Filippo Giraldi was dismissed from his role as sporting director after six months. The Italian’s downfall was a poor January transfer window in which a further seven players, after last summer’s mass influx, moved to Forest. The new signings have, overall, failed to make an impact and instead unsettled a team that had found form.
Ross Wilson has arrived from Rangers to replace Giraldi but with the newly created title of chief football officer. Wilson is well thought of from his time at Southampton but his spell in Scotland was deemed less successful. He will be hoping his job will be focused on recruiting players for the Premier League, rather than trying to sell those on high wages after relegation.
It was a glorious story of football romance as Cooper took the team from the foot of the second tier to victory in a Wembley playoff final but the speed of success was almost too much for a club that had been out of the top flight for 23 years. The cracks between the manager, recruitment team and owners started to form soon afterwards, each pulling in a different direction to assemble a squad capable of staying in the Premier League. A sense of instability has whirred in the background on the banks of the Trent ever since.
Cooper has seemed on the brink for sustained periods, first at the start of the season, until he surprisingly signed a new contract in October, and more recently when Marinakis released a statement to say: “Results and performances must improve immediately.” The first half at Aston Villa was better than the previous loss to Leeds but resulted in a 2-0 defeat to put them in the bottom three. Manchester United will be another tough test.
Other managers have been approached about replacing Cooper. The list of people linked with the job includes Nuno Espírito Santo, Patrick Vieira, Rafa Benítez, Jorge Sampaoli, Sean Dyche and Bruno Lage. Admittedly some of these suggestions may not have been accurate but that level of speculation, however little attention Cooper himself pays to it, is not a good thing for anyone. Instability seeps into a club.
At Marinakis’s other club, Olympiakos, they are now on their fourth manager of the season, a sign that continuity is not high on the agenda in Athens. Short-term solutions are often sought to solve problems perceived to exist. George Syrianos, as Forest’s head of recruitment, and Andy Scott, as chief scout, were sacked after the plethora of summer arrivals failed to gel immediately, while a key architect of promotion, the chief executive, Dane Murphy, was sidelined and then departed. He is yet to be replaced.
The team settled and improved by late October, going on a run of two defeats in 11 games, away at Arsenal and Manchester United, picking up 19 points in the process. Since the January signings have come to the fore, only three points have been earned from 27 available, hence the demise of Giraldi and more scrutiny of Cooper.
In the academy there is uncertainty, too, with the director of football development, Gary Brazil, out of contract in the summer. Brazil is credited with bringing through Matty Cash, Ben Brereton Díaz and Oliver Burke, among others, and two key components of Cooper’s side, Ryan Yates and Brennan Johnson. His methods have made tens of millions in player sales for Forest and the under-18s reached the FA Youth Cup final last season. He is a popular man in Nottingham and, if he were to leave, as is expected, it would be seen as a blow to the youth setup.
Cooper, too, is beloved in Nottingham and deserves copious praise for what he did last season and holding things together in this one. The former Liverpool youth-team coach is learning on the job in his first year as a Premier League manager. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made, heightened by a fear of relegation, when any team coming up via the playoffs would be the natural candidates to go down.
Cooper’s popularity with the fans has been shown by the response when there are rumours he will be sacked and it has prolonged his time in charge. Being under constant pressure from the owners to produce the goods in what is arguably the most difficult league in world football is unsustainable. Cooper and the fans want to be in the Premier League for matches such as Sunday’s with Manchester United at a sold-out City Ground. For many, however, this season will be remembered for everything that has taken place off the pitch. Cooper and Nottingham deserved better than that.
