Duffers' Diaries: Nuno's Nottingham Forest sacking highlights the dangers of disharmony

The freedom to give your opinions should always exist, of course, as should a willingness from those on high to listen, but as a general rule, if you incur the wrath of those in charge you’re likely to be sent packing before too long.

That’s perhaps more often the case in the world of football, where the power of owners can often have more influence over what happens on the pitch than that of the people actually brought in to oversee just that.

So when Nuno Espirito Santo made his displeasure over Nottingham Forest’s transfer window activity very public indeed, and divulged that relations between himself and owner Evangilos Marinakis weren’t good and that there was a lack of togetherness at the club, the writing was probably on the wall.

And so it proved, with Marinakis seemingly quite deliberately waiting until the international break and ensuring he had someone else lined up before disposing of a head coach who, regardless of what went on behind the scenes, was a very popular character amongst the fans and players given how far he’d taken Forest on the pitch.

But nowadays, that isn’t often enough. What a head coach wants and what a head coach gets can often vary wildly depending on everything from budgets to the personalities involved in controlling them, and even the opinions of those who pay their hard-earned money to get through the gate every week matter little.

You could argue that Espirito Santo had earned the right to make a degree of fuss – he’d very nearly guided Forest to the Champions League only to fall away at the end of the campaign, although they did manage to secure Europa League football thanks to the furore surrounding Crystal Palace’s demotion to the Conference League.

Forest did end up making 13 signings during the summer transfer window, although it’s believed that the time it took to secure some of them – and missing out on others – was what strained relations between Santo and both Marinakis and Edu, who is Forest’s global head of football.

Key players left too, including Anthony Elanga, Danilo and Wayne Hennessey.

But fans were largely happy with those signed and any neutral would likely look on and agree that Forest’s squad will have them challenging in the top six once again this season.

So is Espirito Santo to blame for uncharacteristically spitting his dummy out when he should perhaps have been more grateful for what he had, or is Marinakis at fault for pulling the trigger too soon?

Espirito Santo’s downfall was undoubtedly hastened by his public dismay at the goings on, which will have left Marinakis feeling somewhat undermined and if you’re someone with the power and money he has, that’s not something you’ll take lying down.

On the one hand, perhaps that’s fair enough if you’re the one holding the purse strings and attempting to keep the budgets in order.

But on the other, one of the things you surely have to allow when appointing a head coach is that they have the key – if not final – say over who comes in assuming the budget allows.

Football is different nowadays and certainly at the top levels. Head coaches/managers generally don’t have as much input with regard to signings as they may have done years ago, or as is the case lower down the pyramid. Directors of football, heads of recruitment, ‘global heads of football’ – all those kinds of roles exist to help pick the tools with which a head coach will work whether he likes it or not.

But the success of a team does ultimately come down to the work of that head coach and his staff, as well as the players of course, so when disharmony does occur as at Forest, it comes as more of a surprise when a manager departs who has worked wonders and questions then start to be asked as to just what catastrophe behind the scenes could have led to it.

Not only that, but given the timing, the new manager has to then work with a squad over which he had zero input when it came to personnel, unlike his predecessor.

Fans are fickle – if Espirito Santo’s replacement Ange Postecoglou succeeds and quickly, then Forest’s faithful will likely soon forgive and forget and just go with the flow.

But should the new man fail, fingers may again point to those behind the scenes as to why there was an attempt to fix something that wasn’t, on the face of it anyway, broken, or why more of an effort wasn’t made to smooth over any differences for the good of the club’s on-pitch endeavours.