{"id":396424,"date":"2025-09-04T05:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T05:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396424\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T05:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T05:21:10","slug":"nuno-edu-fight-costs-club-record-signing-place-in-nottingham-forest-squad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396424\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuno, Edu fight costs club-record signing place in Nottingham Forest squad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has Nuno Espirito Santo\u2019s \u2018deeply personal\u2019 rift with Edu seen the latter make a club-record signing the former doesn\u2019t want and is thus not including in Nottingham Forest\u2019s 25-man Europa League squad. Looks like it. Fight, fight, fight\u2026<\/p>\n

A season which started with Nuno slamming Nottingham Forest\u2019s pre-season and their lack of transfer business and has already featured reports of him nearing the sack following a \u2018spectacular fallout\u2019 with Edu<\/a><\/strong>, along with a great Premier League win, an honourable draw and a shocking defeat, has now seen their club-record signing fail to make the 25-man squad for their first European campaign in 30 years as Edu, if anything, has gone too far in a bid to discredit his manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very far off in terms of the squad,\u201d Nuno said on the eve of the season. \u201cThe plans we had didn\u2019t work out. The preparation in terms of the squad was not ideal. We don\u2019t know what squad we have. We have players working here who know they are going out on loan. We have a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

We took it as criticism of Evangelos Marinakis, but after reports claimed the Greek owner was considering relieving Nuno of his duties at Forest<\/a><\/strong>, it was revealed that the manager\u2019s big problem is with transfer guru Edu, whom he\u2019s not on speaking terms with in what is a \u2018potentially irreparable\u2019 relationship after a \u2018deeply personal\u2019 rift opened up between them.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Marinakis push for Postecoglou shows \u2018fuming\u2019 Nuno is right to seek Nottingham Forest sack<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten of the 13 players signed by Forest this summer joined the club after Nuno\u2019s supposedly indirect but actually very clearly aimed slam of Edu, making this quite comfortably the biggest transfer window spend in the club\u2019s history at \u00a3192.6m.<\/p>\n

There was always a sense that Marinakis was waiting to get Crystal Palace out of the way before sanctioning a heavy spend to Europa-proof Nuno\u2019s squad, but Forest\u2019s promotion to that higher tier came on August 11, and the transfer blitz didn\u2019t happen for at least another week, suggesting it was indeed Nuno\u2019s public criticism which pushed Edu into action.<\/p>\n

And such is their broken relationship, we wonder whether his laser focus from that point on was less down to an admission of negligence on his part and more about a desire to discredit Nuno\u2019s claim of penny-pinching as he then went on to spend\u00a0more money than all but five football clubs in world football this summer<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Nuno\u2019s stance had changed ahead of their 3-0 defeat to West Ham \u2013 he was by that point warning that \u201cthe worst thing you can have is frustration\u201d among players in a bulging squad in a complete U-turn. Edu must have enjoyed that and went on to sign a further three players on deadline day \u2013 Cuiabano, Dilane Bakwa and Oleksandr Zinchenko \u2013 to give his manager further selection headaches.<\/p>\n

To the point where Omari Hutchinson, the \u00a337.5m club-record signing, has been left out of Forest\u2019s 25-man squad for the Europa League group phase, along with deadline-day signing Oleksandr Zinchenko.<\/p>\n

It represents an extraordinary shift from a point of concern from Nuno 19 days ago that his squad was ill-equipped to battle on multiple fronts, and could be seen as another shot fired at Edu.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem for Nuno has been Edu\u2019s cosy relationship with renowned super-agent Kia Joorabchian, which has pushed trusted ally Jorge Mendes from the Forest transfer picture, and who is the director of the agency which dealt with Hutchinson\u2019s move from Ipswich to the City Ground.<\/p>\n

Are these summer additions Nuno signings or Edu signings? Some will be both but all will be the latter as Marinakis has very much \u2018aligned himself with Edu\u2019, and nine substitute minutes for Hutchinson in two Premier League games for a club-record signing doesn\u2019t suggest it was Nuno who was pushing for his arrival.<\/p>\n

So while Hutchinson\u2019s absence from the Europa League squad may indeed be a sign of Edu\u2019s successful plot to embarrass Nuno through going overboard on signings after his pre-season slam, it may also indicate the manager pushing back against the formal Arsenal man making signings without his input.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can buy them, mate, but you can\u2019t make me play them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has Nuno Espirito Santo\u2019s \u2018deeply personal\u2019 rift with Edu seen the latter make a club-record signing the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[136957,14147,94,163,12,178,28844,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-396424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-edu","9":"tag-f365-says","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-front-page","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-nottingham-forest","14":"tag-nuno-espirito-santo","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115144352407686389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}