Player crisis meeting at Forest which led Marinakis to sack Sean Dyche

Evangelos Marinakis has rolled the dice for the third time and, away from Europe, this has been a season from hell for Nottingham Forest.

Ever since the club’s return to the Premier League in 2022, it has been a rollercoaster ride.

With three relegation scraps, a stirring challenge for Champions League qualification, a points deduction, and various other controversies, Forest are never short of storylines.

Sean Dyche is now their third managerial exit of the season with the club taking drastic action as they bid to avoid dropping into the Championship.

Panic has been building behind the scenes for weeks. Dyche departs with some senior players understood to have recently expressed concerns over his coaching methods and tactics to Marinakis.

After the 0-0 draw with Wolves – where Forest failed to score from 35 shots on goal – Marinakis held a crisis meeting to discuss the next move.

Despite reluctance from some board members to make another change and threaten further disruption, Marinakis felt that dismissing Dyche was the best possible solution to salvaging the season.

The downward spiral in performances was regarded as too alarming to ignore. Fears have grown about a disconnect between the players and coaching staff.

Telegraph Sport understands there was also frustration within the boardroom over some of Dyche’s post-match comments which were perceived to have shifted the blame onto the players.

Other factors such as team selection were concerns, such as the persistence in using Nicolas Dominguez as a left-sided midfielder despite the number of specialist wingers in the squad.

James McAtee, a £25m buy from Manchester City, had his best game against Ferencvaros in the Europa League on January 29 and has not been seen since.

Taiwo Awoniyi has not appeared since a fine solo goal at Brentford.

There is still some sympathy for Dyche. He never made the grade as a player when he was a trainee in the late 1980s under Brian Clough, and this is the job he always wanted.

His assistants, Ian Woan and Steve Stone, are entrenched in the history of the club.

There was no doubt that all had deep affinities with the two-time European Cup winners.

This will have meant more to Dyche than most. After never making a senior appearance, he will have been annoyed by any players who did not represent the badge properly.

It is understood that he wanted players with experience of the Premier League signed in the January transfer window. Two targets were Everton’s Dwight McNeil and Brighton’s Lewis Dunk, but neither arrived.

Lorenzo Lucca was recruited from Napoli and Dyche was unconvinced when recently asked for his thoughts on Luca Netz, a £2m left-back signed from Borussia Monchengladbach.

But the draw with Wolves means Forest have won only two of their past ten league matches.

Dyche said Forest were in the bottom three when he was appointed, repairing the damage of Ange Postecoglou’s reign.

There have been some strong performances, such as the wins over Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford.

The problem is that when Forest were bad, they were really bad. There was a woeful first-half performance at Wrexham in the FA Cup, which ended in defeat on penalties.

Two defeats by Dyche’s former club Everton were poor. While the 1-0 defeat in Braga was calamitous, Friday night’s loss at Leeds was arguably the worst of the lot.

There will be renewed scrutiny on recruitment and the role of Edu Gaspar, their global head of football. Indeed, it is difficult to see how Edu survives past this summer at the latest.

Yet despite the number of summer signings who have proved disappointments, Dyche still had a talented squad.

He had Elliot Anderson, the England midfielder, who is rated at £100m, Morgan Gibbs-White, Murillo, Nikola Milenkovic and Neco Williams. The list could go on, and that is why many fans are frustrated.

At one of Dyche’s previous clubs, Burnley, and to a lesser extent Everton, there was always a sense that players were overperforming. He flourished under the underdog status of upsetting the odds.

At Forest, however, there was almost £200m spent on transfers in the summer alone. The perception is that his squad has far more quality than they are producing regularly.

It is why the recent slump, and the resurgence of West Ham under Forest’s former manager Nuno Espírito Santo, has ramped up the tension.

How has it come to this? Last season, under Nuno, Forest occupied the top four for more than four months and were the surprise package of the season.

Despite a late slump in results they still qualified for European competition after a wait of 30 years.

Later this month they will face Fenerbahce in a two-legged shoot-out and the ambition of Marinakis remains to lift the Europa League trophy.

It is the prospect of relegation to the Championship that is dominating minds. It would be a disaster, financially and for the direction of the club.

Forest are now in a place where Nuno could relegate Forest with West Ham. That is a nightmare scenario Marinakis desperately wants to avoid.

It feels like September 9, when Nuno was sacked, will always be the defining moment of this season. Or July 7, when Edu was appointed.

In late July, at Forest’s pre-season training camp in the Algarve, Nuno predicted much of what has since transpired.

He feared Forest had been worked out by opponents [they won only two of their last eight league games, losing five] and would never benefit from such good fortune again.

He pointed to incidents such as Murillo’s goalline clearance in the 96th minute, which preserved a 1-0 home win over Manchester United on April 1.

He rated striker Chris Wood highly but questioned the likelihood of him scoring 20 goals again. [Wood has missed most of the season with a knee injury].

The absence of new signings in time for pre-season adaptation irritated him and the appointment of Edu.

That arrival damaged the dynamic, in Nuno’s eyes, and there was one particular moment when a remark from the Brazilian killed the relationship.

It has been argued in some quarters that Marinakis “chose” to back Edu over Nuno. It was never as simple as that.

In the week leading up to Nuno’s departure, senior officials held talks with the Portuguese to try and salvage the situation.

Marinakis wanted stability, and had rewarded Nuno with a new contract weeks before. Yet there was something nagging away at the Greek businessman.

He eventually concluded the situation was irretrievable, and Nuno’s public comments were too disrespectful to wave away.

Was it the wrong decision? This season’s struggles and disruption suggest it was, but it was untenable on both sides.

The decision to appoint Postecoglou was a poor one, and Marinakis realised that very quickly.

Postecoglou made the mistake of allegedly telling the players that last season’s achievements meant very little, as he strove to implement a drastic change of style.

His constant references to Tottenham were a grind. He was still angry about that bitter breakup, a few months after winning the Europa League.

The press pack who regularly cover Forest didn’t care about what he achieved at Tottenham, so why would the fans? Postecoglou was sacked after 39 days in charge.

Dyche was the sensible choice as his replacement, and one of the few targets in range of Forest’s financial ability at the time.

Forest would have been desperate to see out the season with Dyche, and then reset in the summer.

Now Marinakis needs to find a fourth manager of the season, with relegation a prospect he dares not think about.

This was supposed to be the season when Forest challenged at the top end, and continued to make progress.

Away from the excitement of the Europa League adventure, many fans are desperate for the season to end.

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