Nottingham Forest owner Marinakis confronts Nuno Espirito Santo after draw with Leicester | OneFootball

Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis and manager Nuno Espírito Santo appeared to have a heated confrontation after their 2-2 draw with local rivals Leicester City.

Marinakis stormed the pitch and exchanged some words with Espírito Santo, before both headed back towards the tunnel.

Explaining the situation, Espírito Santo said it was due to the frustration of losing Awoniyi to injury with the Forest boss unable to make any more changes. “There was a confusion over the situation,” he said.

“There was frustration to play 10 minutes without a player that had so much confidence and being positive that he’s going to score.

“We made the sub, then played with one man less. That causes frustration, it’s obvious.

“Football is emotions. It’s difficult to control, especially when we had so much expectation today.”

The draw is yet another dent in Forest’s Champions League hopes, having won only one of their last five games in the Premier League.

Conor Coady opened the scoring for the Foxes with his first goal in two-and-a-half years, heading into the back of the net after Matz Sels parried Bilal El Khannous’ volley into the path of the Englishman.

Morgan Gibbs-White levelled the scoring for the hosts, rising to meet Anthony Elanga’s free-kick and heading convincingly past Jakub Stolarczyk.

Forest took the lead ten minutes into the second half when Gibbs-White curled a lovely ball into the path of a diving Chris Wood, grabbing his 20th Premier League goal of the season with an incisive header.

However, Brighton loanee Facundo Buonanotte delivered the killer blow, sliding past Morato and slotting comfortably into the bottom corner to salvage a point for Ruud van Nistelrooy’s side.

Speaking to the BBC, Nuno said: “Football is emotions. Today there were more than 30,000 people in the ground with their own emotions. It was a tough moment, after the situation with [Taiwo Awoniyi] we had one man less after a misunderstanding.

“It’s difficult to control emotions when we had so much expectation on a day like this.”

Asked if the pressure had gotten to them, he replied: “I honestly don’t know the reason. We can easily say it’s because of anxiety, because of nerves, but the players don’t transmit that, we don’t feel it, we feel that it’s about us. It was in our hands, it’s no longer in our hands.

“We’ll try to manage the situation but the proof is that we are not playing well, we are not solid in defence, we don’t shut down the teams and that is always a problem in the Premier League.”

Despite only earning a point, the result confirms that Nottingham Forest will have European football at the City Ground next season for the first time since 1996.