A day out from the first whistle of the season, the loudest Marinakis Crystal Palace headline at Nottingham Forest has nothing at all to do with the teamsheet. While Oliver Glasner settles on a side to face Leeds United at the City Ground on Saturday, the Reds’ owner is reported to have taken a dispute with a Premier League rival somewhere football rows rarely go: into the hands of lawyers.
In its 2026-27 season preview of Forest, published on Thursday, the Guardian’s Will Unwin wrote that Evangelos Marinakis “has launched legal action against Crystal Palace after some of their fans produced a derogatory banner about the Forest owner”. Neither club has issued a public statement on the matter, and that report is the only detail in circulation — so treat everything beyond that single line as unknown for now.
What the Marinakis Crystal Palace legal action involves
Very little has been made public, and that is worth saying plainly rather than filling in the gaps. The Guardian does not specify what the banner said, when it was displayed, which court or body the action has been brought before, or what remedy Marinakis is seeking. Forest have not commented. Palace have not commented.
What the report does confirm is a change of register. Owners are abused by rival supporters most weeks in English football and almost none of it travels further than the terraces. Marinakis, as the Guardian notes, is a Greek shipping magnate long accustomed to headlines — but choosing to pursue a fellow Premier League club over the conduct of its fans is an unusual step, and one that boardrooms across the division will be watching.
Why the Palace thread keeps running through Forest’s summer
The timing is what makes it land. Forest’s entire 2026-27 reset is built on a man who was at Selhurst Park until July. Glasner arrived from Palace, and he has brought the 3-4-2-1 that served him there with him — the shape we broke down in our look at Glasner’s new Nottingham Forest formation.
The two clubs keep bumping into each other in the market, too. Forest and Palace have both been credited with interest in Fiorentina midfielder Nicolò Fagioli in the closing stretch of the window, as we set out in our Fagioli transfer breakdown, with the Reds still hunting the creativity lost when Elliot Anderson joined Manchester City for a club-record £116m in July. So Forest are now, simultaneously, managed by Palace’s former head coach, competing with Palace for a midfielder and — per the Guardian — taking Palace to law. That is a lot of thread for one August.
The bigger off-field picture at the City Ground
It is not the only item on Marinakis’s desk. The same Guardian preview reports that plans to expand the City Ground from 30,500 to 52,500 are still awaiting planning approval from the local council, with next summer the most likely start date if the green light comes. Nothing is approved and nothing is built, but the ambition is on the record — and it sits alongside a summer in which Forest banked that £116m for Anderson and reinvested in Ousmane Diomande, Xaver Schlager and Steven Benda.
The Guardian’s writers, for what it is worth, have the Reds down to finish 11th this season, a marked improvement on last term’s 16th.
None of which changes what Saturday is. After a 2025-26 campaign that burned through four head coaches and ended in a relegation scrap, Forest supporters mostly want a season that is boring in all the right places. Glasner, speaking to BBC Radio Nottingham this week, said he is “looking forward to a fantastic atmosphere” — and a full City Ground for the visit of Leeds is the version of Forest news the Tricky Trees would rather be reading. The legal file can wait until Monday. Our full Forest v Leeds preview has the team news.
