HOPEFULLY Evangelos Marinakis will not be watching Nottingham Forest’s game at Leicester from home tonight. Or if so, pray he has a Kleenex handy in case that terrible hacking cough suddenly resurfaces and he gets an uncontrollable urge to gob all over the luxury shag-pile. More importantly, Forest needs its owner to be in good health.
The cigar-chomping billionaire has done wonders for the club in his seven years as majority shareholder. He has turned things around at almost every level, establishing them as a Prem club, integrating the women’s team into the fabric of the business, looking to invest in the Trent Rockets. For a Greek to take a serious interest in cricket is remarkable in itself.
Yet all that admirable effort reviving a football team with a proud history - especially under legend Brian Clough - is being undone by the toilet behaviour of the man at the top. Whether or not 57-year-old Mr Marinakis deliberately spat in the direction of the officials at the City Ground is beside the point. The barely credible excuse that he suffers with a smoker’s cough, forcing him to launch a globule of tobacco-infused phlegm on the floor of the tunnel as he passed by Josh Smith, Tim Robinson and James Mainwaring, is irrelevant.
Marinakis and Forest need to learn to swallow sometimes. Spitting is unpalatable even when players do it. BEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERS But in the middle of a match they at least have mitigating circumstances, the players are after.