The end of an error at the City Ground. Perhaps that is the only thing the club have got right this season, if you’ll forgive the hyperbole. It is one thing to appoint the wrong manager for the wrong reason, but quite another to double down on that mistake by refusing to accept where you went wrong. The best hope is that this will all be a fever dream memory in a couple of years with Nottingham Forest still in the top flight.
The mess remains, publicly daubed across the stadium. We are two months into a league season and Forest have sacked one manager immediately before an international break and sacked another immediately after one. To be employing a third before the clocks go back makes the phrase “permanent manager” distinctly oxymoronic.
You can reasonably argue that this vision went wonky long before August. Nottingham Forest took a monstrous risk in reacting to their best league season in 30 years by changing the power dynamic within the club to welcome Edu. The new Global Head of Football quickly became de facto sporting director, given his influence over transfers. The lack of working relationship with Nuno was well-documented.
Replacing Nuno with Ange Postecoglou was either ambitious or wildly optimistic, depending upon your generosity. For all his excuses and explanations about Tottenham’s league position in 2024-25 and the “winner” schtick, Forest could not afford such underperformance because they were not yet firmly established within the Premier League; one season didn’t change that.
Postecoglou was unfortunate, no doubt. In the first half in Seville against Real Betis, Forest were spellbinding. They repeatedly missed chances and the loss of Ola Aina and Murillo to injury did not help the new manager to organise a defence. Replacing Nuno without a pre-season was a hospital pass, albeit one he put out his hands to catch.
The defence remained disorganised to the point of parody – every supporter winced when a corner was conceded. There were lots of shots but too many from distance.
The telltale signs of late-Tottenham tenure began to show: overloading full-backs caught out, vulnerability to the high ball, fans constantly being told that something was building but not quite being able to work out what it was or whether it was all worth it anyway.
Ange’s demeanour did not help his cause. Steve Cooper and Nuno succeeded partly because they understood the need to take fans on a journey at a club where there has been so much change and upheaval – mostly for the better – over the last half decade.
They spoke of how “we” would grow, learn and develop. Postecoglou used his final pre-match press conference to talk up his own work in his previous job. Fans simply don’t care about that. It was a dismal PR move.
There will be those outside NG2 who accuse Forest supporters of impatience or entitlement – who could be expected to create a new movement in just eight games?
But this is an atmosphere that the club’s decision-makers have fostered, not the fans. If you constantly tell people that you want to be bigger and better and that no achievement is worthy of taking a season to stop and admire the view, don’t be surprised when supporters get tetchy when everything changes and the team subsequently gets worse.
Whoever inherits this squad has so many decisions to make as to make the entire thing headache inducing. Against Chelsea, £120m-worth of signings were left out of the matchday squad entirely – where do James McAtee, Arnaud Kalimuendo, Omari Hutchinson and Dilane Bakwa fit now?
The final game of Ange’s tenure saw them play in a 3-5–1-1 shape without wingers, so why were wingers the primary focus of the summer recruitment? And if Edu was leading that, how did he accrue enough faith to overtake Nuno?
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That is the real mess here and it will take some cleaning up: what is left from what was? In six months the structure has changed, the sporting director has changed, the manager has changed (twice), half the team has changed, the style of play the club wants to utilise has changed and the formation has changed (repeatedly, under Postecoglou). On the pitch, Forest have lost the things they were good at and replaced them only with infuriating habits.
Make no mistake: nobody can know what happens at Forest next. Clubs inside the financial elite are insured against repeated mistakes. Those outside can create their own soft landings through continuity and stability.
There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing the opposite approach; you might even call it courageous and ambitious and sometimes it happens through necessity. But by trying to lift up your ceiling you also remove your floor. Under Nuno, controlling the controllables was the prime mantra. Now control barely lives here at all.
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