Football can be a strange game. Even successful managers can be vulnerable to mercurial owners, particularly when those owners enjoy popularity with fans because of the way they have turned a club around.
Some consider that the crisis at Nottingham Forest has been
overblown by the media and will get settled one way or another, amicably or
not. Certainly there is a sense in
which it is open season or having a go at Forest.
Nevertheless, is there any way to fix this mess, given that
Nuno’s working relationship with Edu, the newly appointed global head of
football for Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis’ multi-club empire, has got off
to such an alarmingly bad start
Nuno offered a glimpse into his own mindset before the
1-1 draw away to Crystal Palace on Sunday, when he confirmed he wanted to
continue as Forest’s coach — some reports had questioned whether he was trying
to engineer his own sacking — but accepted the three relevant people needed to
get together to work this out.?
Yet Nuno, by his own admission, accepts that his job is in
danger and admitted last week — “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” – that he suspected
there was something in the reports that Marinakis was considering sacking
him. So, is he really enjoying it?
“Of course, the situation has to be solved,” he said. “We
are responsible people and we are going to have a good conversation to try,
more than anything, to create a good platform for what is most important — the
team.”
The strange thing, perhaps, was when Nuno went on to say he
was willing to wait. If you thought he might want these talks to happen
straight away, that would be wrong. Instead, he talked about the priority for
Forest being to bring in three more signings — a goalkeeper and two full-backs
— ahead of the transfer window closing next Monday, September 1.
The bond between Nuno and his team is a close one and, as he
acknowledged, over the past few days there has been a lot of understandable
confusion for those players.
Sunday’s draw, secured by Callum Hudson-Odoi’s second-half
equaliser, took place amid a backdrop of reports stating that Brendan Rodgers,
the Celtic manager, or Ange Postecoglou, fired by Tottenham Hotspur earlier
this summer, were in the running to replace him. Who could be surprised if the
mood in the dressing room had been more subdued than usual?
There was also a sense of unease among some of the away fans
– and perhaps also an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu, given the uncertainty
around Nuno is not the first time they have had to endure this kind of
turbulence in the eight-year Marinakis era.
But then there are evident pluses from his reign.
Comments
Post a Comment