EmmersonForest4
Steve Chettle
Its conjecture to say that the manager also wanted the players. So thats all we have to work with. From the evidence of how many Olympiakos signings and Mendes signings were brought in under different managers.
Tomlin came in on loan and maybe didnt want to come in Summer but maybe he did.
Also Daniel Taylor has written about it before and I have subscription to the athletic so I can relay
Those supporters were even more perplexed by the idea that he would decide to walk away, especially when Forest had beaten Leeds United, then the Championship leaders, in their previous league match. Forest won 4-2 and a sold-out City Ground made it clear they wanted Karanka to stay. The team were one place outside the play-offs and the transfer window had just opened. So why would any manager in that position just walk away?
The answer is that, by that stage, Karanka was so worn down by the politics and unpleasantness behind the scenes that he did not have the stomach to carry on any longer.
Karanka was emotionally drained. He had been unhappy for some time. His wife, Ana, had stopped going to games because she did not want to see the people he blamed for making him so miserable. One person in particular: chief executive Ioannis Vrentzos.
That was the season Forest had allied with the “super-agent” Jorge Mendes. The Greeks wanted Mendes to have the same kind of positive influence for Forest that he did for Wolves in their 2017-18 promotion season. But Karanka started to feel under pressure from Vrentzos to pick certain players.
Key figures have told The Athletic that Karanka felt there was interference from above on team selection and that he worked for months in the belief that, if he did not do as they wanted, his job was increasingly in danger. It is understood Forest say the allegations of interference are incorrect and unfair.
One issue related to Arvin Appiah, one of the players to come through the club’s academy.
Forest’s hierarchy wanted Appiah to be involved with the first-team squad because the club intended to sell the player and thought it would bump up his valuation. Mendes had links to potential buyers and the club’s information was that Manchester United might be keen. Forest thought they could raise the kind of transfer fee that would help the club keep within the financial fair play regulations.
Karanka saw it differently. Appiah was talented but raw and Karanka had considerable doubts about whether a boy of 17 was ready for the Championship.
Insiders say Karanka’s relationship with Vrentzos had soured within a few months of taking the job and that he resented the way the chief executive behaved towards him. The issue with Appiah made it considerably worse. Nor did it help that Vrentzos had a habit of turning up to watch training after bad results, creating more pressure simply because of his presence.
One colleague recalls seeing Karanka’s shoulders sag and his entire body language change for the worse when he came off the training pitch, with a game the next day, to be told Vrentzos wanted to speak to him.
As everything came to a head, Karanka’s mentality was: you are going to sack me at some point, so I would rather be sacked picking the team I want.
On Boxing Day, 2018, Forest went to Norwich City and took a 3-0 lead after 74 minutes. Norwich then scored three of their own to salvage an almost implausible draw. The equaliser came in the eighth minute of stoppage time and journalists were told directly after the game that Karanka was close to being sacked. The story was out. Everyone knew Karanka was a dead man walking from that point onwards and for the next three weeks, the headlines created a whirl of pressure and uncertainty around him.
It was even leaked at one point that O’Neill had been identified as the choice of replacement.
Forest lost their next match at Millwall and, in the build-up to the game, the players noticed how detached Karanka was on the training ground. What they did not realise was that he had been close to resigning two months earlier. Karanka had accepted his relationship with Vrentzos was broken and blamed him for what had gone wrong.
Towards the end of Karanka’s reign, Vrentzos was turning up at the training ground on a near-daily basis. Not all the players were happy to see him and, noting the subdued atmosphere, it did not go down well when he told a member of medical staff to “get them all some laughing gas”. Vrentzos didn’t seem to realise that one of the reasons why the mood was so sombre was because of him.
Karanka was used to club politics and dealing with difficult bosses. He had been a player at Real Madrid and was part of the coaching staff at the Bernabeu when Jose Mourinho was manager. Yet he was shocked by his alleged treatment at Forest when, in his mind, it could have been the start of something special.
When Forest won one game against Ipswich Town, six weeks before his resignation, he looked so downbeat during the post-match press conference the BBC Radio Nottingham interviewer asked him, “You seem a bit flat, are you OK?”
“I’m very flat,” Karanka replied.
That went down badly with the club. The club are believed to feel that Karanka was putting on an act, hamming up his alleged unhappiness, and to claim that he had been celebrating the result in his office a few minutes earlier.
Marinakis flew in at one point to see if there was any way of fixing the relationship between Karanka and Vrentzos. But Karanka, regarded by colleagues as an intense yet honourable man, could not take any more. He had decided it was impossible to work with Vrentzos any more and concluded that Forest’s FA Cup tie at Chelsea would be his final match.
Karanka asked to be released from his contract and, as well as arranging a farewell meal for his closest staff at a nearby Gusto restaurant, he went to the stadium to say goodbye to everyone in the offices. Once that was done, he returned to the training ground to collect his belongings and say goodbye to all the relevant people there, too.
At the top of the club, they were annoyed that he was, in their eyes, still hanging around.
The club said they would not pay for some plastic boxes that had been bought by another member of staff, out of his own pocket, to help Karanka’s coaches pack up their belongings with a bit more dignity than having to use bin bags.
Appiah, now 19, was sold for £8 million eight months later. Yet it was not Manchester United who came in for him. It was Almeria — one of the clubs where Mendes has his strongest influence — in Spain’s second division. And by that stage, Forest had already moved out another manager.
I think the club fecked Karanka over royaly, not to mention Soudani a complete waste of money.
