Forest named Nuno Espirito Santo to replace Cooper on a two-and-a-half-year contract on Wednesday.
The Welshman was fired the day before after two years in command, having lost five of his last six league games.
The former England U17s boss took over as Forest manager in September 2021, when the team was at the bottom of the Championship.
He went on to guide them to playoff triumph, defeating Huddersfield in the final at Wembley, before ensuring the club’s Premier League survival the following season despite a massive turnover of players.
Cooper’s relationship with the club’s leadership, on the other hand, has supposedly been deteriorating for some time.
According to the Athletic, Cooper grew enraged with club chairman Randall in the summer after a joke he made at the team’s pre-season uniform reveal for supporters, sponsors, and other visitors at Nottingham Castle.Randall delivered a speech in which he began by jokingly referencing to Cooper’s attire, which the Forest leader apparently laughed off.
According to the magazine, Cooper grew enraged when Randall used club captain Joe Worrall as the victim of a cheap joke.
Worrall, Randall claimed, has dreamed of becoming a professional cricketer since he was a youngster. According to the Athletic, the story’s punchline was, “And halfway through last season, we all wished he had been a professional cricketer, too.”
Worrall was reportedly dissatisfied, while Cooper apparently considered his captain’s public humiliation as a “kick in the teeth” for himself, the player, and all of his coaching staff.
Randall’s remarks were apparently so offensive that some club officials discussed not wanting the chairman on the same plane as the players for a pre-season game against Eintracht Frankfurt. Finally, Randall was reportedly informed that there were insufficient seats on the trip to Germany.
