Judging only by the league table, all seems to be going well for Nottingham Forest. A win over Brentford and a come-from-behind draw against Crystal Palace gives the Trees four points from two matches, a still-early tally but one that nonetheless serves as a good omen for a season where matching the heights from the previous campaign might be difficult, thanks to the departure of key contributors like Anthony Elanga and Danilo. Under the surface, though, Nottingham Forest might be the club most in chaos in the Premier League, thanks to various manager-management feuds and a controversial tiff with Crystal Palace grounded in European competition rulings.
This mess has it all: a Football Association investigation, Profit and Sustainability Rules concerns, an Ange Postecoglou rumor, and the resurfacing of Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis’s acquittal in relation to a 2014 Greek heroin shipping saga. While the on-field product hasn’t suffered just yet—it is early, after all—the house of cards Forest built up last year feels one gust away from collapsing in on itself.
Let’s start with the most recent kerfuffle, involving Crystal Palace. Despite winning the FA Cup last season, which grants the winner a spot in the Europa League if that club has not qualified for the competition (or the Champions League above it) through domestic play, Palace is playing in the Conference League this season, the third tier of European continental competition. This is because of a weird quirk in the increasingly consolidated soccer world: A club can’t compete in the same competition as another owned by the same person. In Palace’s case, the club’s now-ex minority owner, John Textor, owns a controlling stake in French club Lyon, who also qualified for the Europa League. (Textor sold his shares in Palace in July.) Where does Forest come in here? As the potential beneficiaries of a Palace demotion—they would move up into the Europa League if Palace was demoted—Forest sent a letter to UEFA outlining what it saw as a breach of the multi-club ownership regulations. The club attested that it simply sent a letter to clarify which competition Forest would play in this season, but Palace chairman Steve Parish put out a statement that clearly blamed Forest for being tattle tales.
This brings us to Sunday’s match at Selhurst Park, where some of the home Palace fans unveiled a banner targeting Marinakis. Images speak louder than words, so let’s drop that in:
That’s Morgan Gibbs-White, the Forest midfielder who was a crucial figure in last year’s surge up the table, having a gun held to his head by Marinakis. Gibbs-White was on his way to Tottenham in a sale this summer, but ended up staying at Forest and signing a new contract after meeting personally with Marinakis. As for Marinakis, oh boy. Long story short: A Greek ship, the Noor One, was involved in a heroin bust back in 2014, one that was followed by the murders and deaths of upwards of 20 people involved with the ship. Marinakis was investigated for ties to the shipment, though he was eventually cleared of all suspicion in 2021. There’s a lot in this story, as The New Republic reported in 2020, but that explains almost everything on the Palace banner.
The match-fixing part, though, comes from various controversies with Olympiacos, the Greek club also owned by Marinakis. The club, and Marinakis himself, were investigated over a 2011 match against Panathinaikos, but the owner was found not guilty in court. Marinakis was also investigated, and acquitted, for potentially influencing a cup final between Olympiacos and Asteras Tripolis in 2014. As if that weren’t enough, Marinakis was also at the center of another match-fixing scandal related to a 2013 Olympiacos match against Veria; he ended up resigning his role as club president but, in 2017, was once again acquitted of wrongdoing.
Given that convoluted history, the Palace fans had plenty of ammunition for their banner, and it, as intended, did not pass quietly. How could it? The English FA has said it will investigate the banner, which at the very least appears to clash with Palace’s published guidelines for its stadium.
Banners and international scandals aside, there does appear to be a feud between manager Nuno Espirito Santo and the upper echelons of the club, and that’s the more pressing issue. First, it was reported that the manager, who took over Forest in December of 2023, was in a standoff with Marinakis. During a press conference last week, Nuno needed very little prompting to start talking about how his relationship with the Greek owner has “changed” and is not as close as it was last season. In a Sky Sports interview, he also claimed there is a “major problem” inside the club. Those internal problems became external at the end of last season, when Marinakis stormed onto the field after Forest’s 2-2 draw against to Leicester to engage in all sorts of carrying on with Nuno.
However, the rift with Marinakis may not be the real issue: It appears that the real feud is between Nuno and new sporting director Edu, who moved to the club from Arsenal in the summer to take over the newly created position of “global head of football.” As reported by The Athletic’s Daniel Taylor before the Palace game, the rift began from a lack of transfer activity, as brought to light by Nuno. Even despite Forest making a number of high-profile signings following his initial comments about a “major problem,” Nuno’s beef has persisted.
After Sunday’s draw at Palace, Nuno admitted to the press that there is an issue with Edu, stemming from the summer’s transfer dealings, and that the relationship has to improve for him to stay at the helm of the club. (He did state unequivocally that he did not want to leave Forest, contradicting previous reports which claimed he was trying to engineer his own firing.) That hasn’t stopped the rumors from flying, including one that former Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou might be first in line to take over; on a purely tactical level, it would be very entertaining to watch Postecoglou, a high-line, high-press devotee, take over a club that had the lowest defensive line in England last season. For his part, Edu has reportedly stayed away from training sessions as this rift either grows or ferments.
This season was always going to be difficult for Nottingham Forest—that’s often the case for clubs who punch above their weight all the way into European competition. While Forest faded towards the end of last season, from a potential and shocking Champions League qualification all the way down to seventh on the table, the club entered this season with aspirations of maintaining an excellent domestic level alongside a strong performance in the Europa League. Volatility is the last thing a team in this kind of position needs, but it’s hard to imagine a more volatile situation than a manager who won’t stop airing his grievances in public working under a sporting director who can’t show his face at the training ground and an owner who could easily be mistaken for a mob boss.