Former football owner turned pundit Simon Jordan has praised Nottingham Forest chief Evangelos Marinakis for sticking by manager Steve Cooper.
A run of five straight defeats had piled the pressure on the Forest boss. The latest of those defeats saw the Reds fall to a 4-0 loss against Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Monday night.
Just hours after the defeat, speculation over the future of Cooper started, with the Reds said to be considering the Welshman’s future. That has now changed, with Forest confirming that the manager has put pen to paper on a new contract that runs until 2025.
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The news puts to end any speculation over Cooper’s immediate future at the club, ahead of Monday night’s Premier League game against Aston Villa at the City Ground. Following the news, Jordan delivered his verdict, praising Marinakis for his decision to back the manager to lift Forest up the table.
“What it is is smart, because it will give Cooper a lift,” he told TalkSPORT. “Cooper looked like a haunted man on Monday, what he now knows, even if he didn’t know it before, is that his owner is behind him, his owner believes in him and that is an immense lift.
“I did it once with Neil Warnock, we got beat 4-0 at home against Doncaster, Neil phones me up, we were expected to get promoted, and to get beat 4-0 at home against Doncaster he said ‘that’s not very good is it?’ I said ‘don’t worry, I’ve got you, you’ll fix it.’
“That’s a lift. This guy’s gone beyond that, he’s given him a new contract and doubled down.
“It’s not the narrative that’s being spun out in the media, it’s not what people expected, it shows you that this owner is not an emotional illiterate, he understands the landscape of the footballing world he is in and knows that this guy, Cooper, is probably the right one.”
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