Vitor Pereira reveals Nottingham Forest sacking email ‘was not correct’ and sets Premier League title target

Vitor Pereira has revealed that Nottingham Forest sacked him by email at 11.58pm on 30 June, and the Portuguese manager says the way the club went about it ‘was not correct’. Pereira saved Forest from relegation last season, but he has now told The Athletic that he was dismissed with the pre-season already planned.

The 58-year-old was appointed in February, when Forest were three points above the relegation zone, and left them 16th in the Premier League, five points ahead of relegated West Ham United and above Tottenham Hotspur. His contract contained a clause allowing either party to end the agreement before the end of June, and Forest used it with two minutes to spare.

Vitor Pereira describes sacking email

By the time the email arrived, Pereira had reviewed the positives and negatives of the previous season, arranged the pre-season friendlies and even identified possible signings. The players were due to report within weeks, but under a different manager.

‘It was a complete surprise,’ Pereira told The Athletic. ‘I never heard anything that made me feel or think the club no longer counted on me. In the end, they had the right to decide what they wanted for the club, and I accept that.’

He accepted the decision, but not the manner in which owner Evangelos Marinakis’ regime carried it out.

‘The only thing that was not correct was the way they did it - that was the only unfair part. Sending an email... two minutes before midnight, when we had already organised everything for pre-season.’

Why Nottingham Forest changed its mind

The late timing had a reason. It came just after Forest learned that Oliver Glasner, who won the Conference League and the 2025 FA Cup with Crystal Palace, was interested in taking over following his exit from Selhurst Park.

‘If they had said to me, “Vitor, although you have organised everything, we have another possibility...”, that would have been fine. That is football,’ Pereira said. ‘In my career, I have spent many years working in different countries, with different cultures. I have plenty of experience, and I know that sometimes football is like that.’

‘But it is fine, I am not the type of person who dwells on the past. I prefer to live in the present, and the present means studying, preparing and getting stronger for the next opportunity. I want to keep the work we did there in my memory. I take with me the affection of the supporters, the people at the club and the players.’

The change has not yet been justified. Forest are second from bottom of the current Premier League table with one win from nine matches, are winless in five and have already been knocked out of the EFL Cup.

Vitor Pereira no longer wants to be a ‘firefighter’

Pereira’s job at Forest mirrored his previous Premier League role at Wolverhampton Wanderers, where he took over midway through 2024-25 and secured survival. He stayed on, but was sacked in November last season with Wolves bottom of the table, before they were relegated.

The Portuguese now wants a different path and does not want to take over sides fighting relegation. ‘I am not a firefighter,’ he said.

‘I want to prove my worth by facing and competing with the best managers in the league, and do something special. When you take over a team in the middle of the season, it is because something is not working. That means I have to accept that situation, start with energy and take the right steps to build something solid.’

Pereira says he will look for projects capable of competing for the title and has recently received offers that he might have accepted at another stage of his career.

‘My goal for the future is to compete for titles in the Premier League. If you look at my career before I came to England, you will see that I almost always worked to win titles. I need to take the right steps to reach that level in the Premier League, but that is my goal.’

The last time he took charge of a club among the favourites for domestic honours was Flamengo in 2023, where he failed in the Campeonato Carioca, the Recopa Sudamericana, the Supercopa do Brasil and the Club World Cup, and was sacked within three months.