Filippo Giraldi - Sporting Director

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Nottingham Forest have sacked their sporting director Filippo Giraldi after only six months in the job. The Times understands that the owners informed the 49-year-old of their decision on Monday, with the hierarchy focusing on what changes need to be made to get the club out of the relegation zone. Forest’s January recruitment — bringing in Danilo, Felipe, Keylor Navas, Gustavo Scarpa, André Ayew, Jonjo Shelvey and Chris Wood — has come under scrutiny since the club dropped into the bottom three. Evangelos Marinakis, the club’s owner, has already made big changes to Forest’s recruitment team this season, sacking the head of recruitment, George Syrianos, and the head scout, Andy Scott, in October. The pair had headed up the team that oversaw the arrival of 22 players in the summer window and with the side struggling to gel and pick up points the club wanted to make changes. Their departures came while Forest were struggling at the start of the season, with five points from their opening nine games. With the club now in a similarly difficult situation, with no wins in their past nine games, the ownership have decided to make another change. Giraldi arrived in October, with the task of auditing the present club structure and evaluating the roles of staff. The hope was that after extensive experience in the Premier League with Watford he could bring Forest up to the standard the owners expected. He worked closely with Steve Cooper, the head coach, from his office at the club’s training ground and is understood to have had a good working relationship with him. Marinakis, however, had been weighing up changes for a few weeks as the club struggle in their fight against relegation. Sacking Cooper has been considered, but he moved to end speculation that the head coach was on the verge of being dismissed after the defeat by Leeds United last week. Forest lost again, against Aston Villa, on Saturday, but it is understood that there has been no indication that they are considering making a managerial change this week. However, with a run of games against Manchester United, Liverpool, Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford coming up, there will need to be some surprise results in those games to ensure that Cooper stays in his position until the end of the season.