Revealed: Nuno’s row with Edu at the heart of his Nottingham Forest unhappiness

The question every Nottingham Forest fan would like answering is: how has it come to this? And the answer goes back to the appointment earlier this summer that owner Evangelos Marinakis believed would help take the club to the next level.

When Marinakis announced the appointment of Edu, formerly Arsenal’s sporting director, as Forest’s new transfer guru, he was entitled to think of it as a significant coup for a club their size. Just check out the wording of the official announcement. Forest were “proud” to confirm Edu’s arrival, read the club’s statement — not just pleased, or delighted, but proud.

Nottingham Forest is proud to announce the appointment of Edu Gaspar as Global Head of Football, a newly established leadership role overseeing football operations. — Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) July 7, 2025

Unfortunately for Forest, one man was not quite so enamoured: Nuno Espirito Santo, the manager who has led Forest back into Europe for the first time in 30 years and, unreported until now, has had a spectacular fallout with Edu behind the scenes.

Nuno’s relationship with Edu started badly and, since then, it has deteriorated to the point where there is an acceptance at the City Ground that the damage is potentially irreparable. Edu arrived with Kia Joorabchian, the influential businessman and football advisor, as his close ally. The manager has made his feelings clear, particularly about Edu, both to the man himself and others at the club.

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It is personal, deeply personal, between himself and Edu and perhaps the most worrying aspect for Forest fans is that, as things stand, it is difficult to see the two men making up. Of the two, Nuno has largely been the aggressor, outspoken in the extreme. Edu has been staying away from the club’s training ground.

This has been bubbling away for the past two months and has clearly put Marinakis in a difficult position, to say the least, when two of the most important people at the club are not even on speaking terms.

On the one hand, Nuno is a highly respected and popular coach who has come to be adored by the club’s supporters and was widely touted last season as a potential winner of manager-of-the-year awards.

Don’t forget that Nuno also signed a new contract on June 20, two and a half weeks before Edu was confirmed as the global head of football for Marinakis’ empire — Forest, Greek club Olympiacos and Portuguese team Rio Ave. Marinakis saw the Brazilian as a brilliant appointment and expected his manager to adapt to a new working environment.

So what does Marinakis do when it becomes clear Nuno has taken against Edu and, even more troublingly, has suddenly chosen to direct his anger — or at least part of it — towards the club during a series of deliberately aggressive press-conference statements?

First of all, let’s go back to Nuno’s interview with Sky on Wednesday last week when he went public for the first time about his grievances with the club’s recruitment over the summer.

Forest, he said, had a “major problem”. It had been a bad pre-season, Nuno continued, expressing his irritation about how long everything was taking to come together. He talked about being “worried” and described Forest as “very, very far” from where they needed to be.

Nuno did not mention Edu by name. Everyone, however, at the top level of the club, from Marinakis down, knew who it was directed towards — and that there was more to it than just the club’s transfer business.

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That interview was not supposed to be out until the weekend (though parts of it were released on Friday) and it was not a coincidence that Forest suddenly stepped up their transfer activity on Thursday and Friday.

Omari Hutchinson arrived from Ipswich Town in a club-record £37.5million transfer, followed by striker Arnaud Kalimuendo from French club Rennes and Manchester City’s James McAtee. Then, on Thursday evening, Douglas Luiz arrived on loan from Juventus, with an obligation to buy.

In doing so, the PR narrative changed considerably from what it would have been had Nuno’s comments gone out before the flurry of new signings. Everything had been overtaken and, while Nuno’s comments were obviously concerning, the good news outweighed the bad. Or that, at least, was how it would have seemed to anyone not understanding the politics behind the scenes.

In reality, the rift still existed.

Marinakis, moreover, could probably be forgiven for taking Nuno’s comments personally, given how generous the Forest owner has been, financially, when it comes to transfer spend.

It is no exaggeration to say Forest were stunned by Nuno’s comments — not just what he said, but the fact he looked visibly angry — and his timing to go public in this way for an interview that was meant to go out 24 hours before their first game of the season.

As it turned out, the mood was soothed by Forest’s 3-1 win over Brentford and a performance that suggested Nuno’s team might be in for another exciting season. Again, though, nothing has changed in the context of how Nuno sees Edu and the wider effect it is having on the club.

At his latest press conference, Nuno described his relationship with Marinakis as having changed and went public that they were “not so close” anymore. And that, in a nutshell, is because Marinakis has aligned himself with Edu.

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“I have always had a very good relationship with the owner,” said Nuno. “Last season was very, very close, (we spoke) almost on a daily basis. This season, not so well. I always believed that dialogue and what you say, or your opinions, are always valid. Because my concern is the squad and the season that we have ahead of us.

“Our relationship has changed. It’s not so close. It’s not on a daily basis. It’s not good, everyone at the club should be together but it’s not the reality.”

For context, this follows a concerted attempt by the club to pour cold water on reports from abroad, starting early on Friday, that Marinakis was considering sacking him. Instead, Nuno chose to go public again, surely knowing that Marinakis would take it as a personal affront. When asked about the reports, the 51-year-old replied: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, so I know how things work, but I’m here to do my job.”

Being a manager in the Marinakis empire is a challenging job, as Steve Cooper and various others can testify. Behind the scenes at Forest, there is often conflict at the highest level. Some of the people who have been prominently involved since Marinakis’ takeover in 2017 positively encourage it.

At the same time, this is a troubling situation for everyone at the City Ground and the speed at which relations have unravelled, or started to unravel, has been startling. And to a degree, it is easy to sympathise with Marinakis on this occasion. Plainly, he could never have realised that Nuno would take against the new man from virtually day one. Yet, at the very first meeting, there were hostilities. It blew up almost immediately.

Are there more politics involved? Nuno is represented by Jorge Mendes, who at one stage could legitimately be described as Marinakis’ go-to agent in the transfer market.

Yet Mendes has not been involved in any Forest transfer since Eric da Silva Moreira arrived from St. Pauli in June 2024, and these days it is very much an operation that has Joorabchian at the heart of what they do.

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Joorabchian, an Iranian-born businessman, is best known for looking after Carlos Tevez during the Argentine’s brilliant yet often controversial playing career, including spells with West Ham United, Manchester United and Manchester City.

Joorabchian has had a string of other top-level clients and was closely involved in the past with Everton, Reading and Manchester City. He also represents Hutchinson and Douglas Luiz and was partly involved in the deal that saw Anthony Elanga move to Newcastle United for £52m earlier this summer.

Edu sees him as a close ally, and so does Marinakis. In the last year or so, Joorabchian has become increasingly involved with Marinakis in a number of business interests, spending millions of pounds on racehorses with associates that include the Greek billionaire.

Has that put Mendes’ nose out of joint? Possibly, but The Athletic’s information is that Mendes plays no significant part in the latest drama and it is far more the case that Nuno views his relationship with Edu as broken. Joorabchian is a big part of the modern Forest, but it all starts with the Nuno-Edu dynamic — what should be the second most important relationship within the club.

Can it be fixed? Every Forest fan would hope so, and every player, too, because it is undoubtedly the case that Nuno is popular within the dressing room.

For now, though, this is a story of politics, tension, male pride and suspicion that has suddenly propelled Nuno to the top of the bookmakers’ lists when it comes to the next Premier League manager to be sacked. It is also the case that questions are being asked about whether Friday morning’s reports of a potential sacking were leaked deliberately to crank everything up just before Nuno’s weekly press conference.

It is not a healthy situation and, one week into the new Premier League season, the supporters who have grown to love Nuno must be shocked by how quickly in football — and Forest, in particular — the mood can change.

(Top pictures: Getty Images)

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