O’Neill set to be named Forest manager
MARTIN O’Neill is poised to be named Nottingham Forest manager, Press Association Sport understands.
The 66-year-old left his role as Republic of Ireland boss in November and is now set to succeed Aitor Karanka at the City Ground.
O’Neill has been linked with the managerial job at Forest numerous times before, having enjoyed a successful playing career for the club which included winning two European Cups.
Negotiations are at an advanced stage for O’Neill to be named as boss.
There is no news yet whether Roy Keane, the former Forest midfielder who assisted O’Neill with Ireland, will also be moving to the City Ground.
O’Neill was a midfielder for Brian Clough’s continental conquering team which won the 1977-78 English title and then back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980. Clough managed Forest from 1975 to 1993.
Irishman O’Neill enjoyed success with Wycombe, Leicester and Celtic as a manager, before less fruitful spells with Aston Villa and Sunderland.
Forest are ninth in the Championship, four points behind local rivals Derby, who occupy the final play-off spot, and lost 2-0 at Reading on Saturday.
Simon Ireland was in caretaker charge for the Reading game, but it appears likely to be his only match in the hot-seat, with O’Neill set to arrive ahead of Saturday’s Championship clash at home to Bristol City.
He is poised to become Forest’s 11th full-time boss since 2011.
» UEFA has announced that more than three quarters of the tickets at this summer’s Nations League Finals matches in Portugal will be reserved for supporters of the participating teams and the general public. This means there will be 10,000 tickets per game available to fans of England, Holland, Portugal and Switzerland, with a further 42,000 across the four games on offer to members of the general public.
The allocations to the participating nations will be sold via their national associations, with the remaining 38,000 tickets reserved for broadcasters, the hospitality programme, the local organising committee, sponsors and UEFA, European football’s governing body.
Confirmation that each participating nation will get at least 10,000 tickets will come as a relief to the Football Association, which had been concerned that the decision to stage two of the four games in Guimaraes, including England’s June 6 semi-final against the Dutch, could leave lots of fans without tickets.
The northern Portuguese city’s Estadio D Alfonso Henriques, home to Vitoria Sport Clube, was renovated for Euro 2004 but is relatively small for major internationals with a capacity of just 30,000.