Nottingham Forest’s off-field chaos has dealt Steve Cooper a tough hand

I t 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