Nottingham Forest head coach Steve Cooper was being eyed by Crystal Palace but it now looks like they’ve turned their attention elsewhere. The Eagles will go for Adi Hutter, with the manager set to take over in the summer from Roy Hodgson.
The experienced manager came into Selhurst Park last month and has overseen three successive wins. That has put the Eagles clear of the relegation zone and they have now started to put some plans into place for the 2023/24 campaign.
Austrian head coach Hutter has been out of work since June 2022 when he was in charge of Borussia Monchengladbach. The 53-year-old has also managed Young Boys, Salzburg and Eintracht Frankfurt during his managerial career and now Kurier claims he’s off to Palace.
Palace had been looking at the possibility of appointing Cooper. With the manager’s future up in the air, several clubs are monitoring the situation and if Forest do axe him it’s unlikely he will be out of work for too long.
The 43-year-old head coach has been at Forest since September 2021. He has taken the team from the bottom of the Championship to the Premier League in next to no time and the second half of last season was really something special.
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Evangelos Marinakis has shown the right kind of faith in Cooper. Given his disjointed things have been this season, it would have been really easy for the owner to show the boss the door.
Cooper was eyed by Palace but now they’re looking elsewhere
The Forest man did get dealt a pretty bleak hand at the City Ground this season. He watched on as the club signed over 20 new players in the summer and a further seven in January. Quite how many of those were his remains to be seen.
The Reds head coach isn’t faultless for Forest’s run of 10 games without a win, however. His tactics and substitutions have, at times, been very strange and he will have to learn at the Premier League level.
However, he is a strong head coach. It’s no surprise that other clubs were sniffing around, with Palace showing a keen interest in appointing him at one stage.
Forest will likely stick with Cooper for the foreseeable now. After facing Liverpool on Saturday, Forest will only have six games remaining and now is the chance for the boss to really earn his coin.