Rafa Benitez is being strongly linked with the Nottingham Forest job that is currently occupied by Steve Cooper but probably not for long.
Forest are rock-bottom of the Premier League after a 4-0 defeat to previous bottom-dwellers Leicester City on Monday night.
Cooper has been in charge for 12 months, taking Forest from the bottom reaches of the Championship to an unlikely promotion, but is expected to lose his job after struggling to get a tune out of a group of largely new recruits.
From what we saw on Monday night, there seems little hope of Cooper being allowed to attempt survival.
Benitez is already being linked, with some reports suggesting that the Spaniard has already been approached.
Other names mentioned are former Burnley manager Sean Dyche and former Wolves and Spurs boss Nuno Espirito Santo.
Cooper was asked on Monday night if his future is in doubt and he said: “I completely understand the situation and the question and respect it 100 per cent.
“But my concern is we have lost another game for this club, not my own situation because I care more about the club more than my personal circumstances.
“We are on a run of results that are not good, I am not going to shy away from that.
“I’m not thinking about my personal situation apart from how I can be at my best every day, but the tougher it gets the more I work and the more it means to me.”
The meeting of the under-pressure Cooper and Brendan Rodgers was variously billed as the ‘P45 Derby’ or ‘El Sackico’, and defeat sees Forest swap places with Leicester to drop to the bottom of the table, a fifth straight loss their worst run in the league since 2004.
Cooper is still trying to get to grips with a squad that had 22 new arrivals this summer, but insisted progress was being made.
“It’s a poor run of results, the stat on chances and goals we’re conceding is not good and we’re trying to address it, but what I would say is you didn’t see the team give up,” he said. “I know it’s a group of players that care even though we’re new.
“Sometimes you can feel that and I’m not sensing that at the moment. We’re just trying to put loads of layers of our work in to become the team we want to be and we’re not that at the moment…
“We’ve got a lot of new players and it’s not just about being a team on the pitch. It’s about the relationships, the camaraderie and everything else you need to be a successful team. We are trying to become that on the job in…
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