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Nuno SACKED by Nottingham Forest!! And Ange IN as an immediate replacement
24 Plays3 days ago
In a whirlwind 24 hours, Nuno has been sacked by Nottingham Forest, with former Spurs boss Ange Postecoglu appointed to succeed him, ahead of an away trip to Arsneal at the weekend.
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Transcript
Managerial Change at Nottingham Forest
00:00:15
Global Sports Podcast Network
Hello, very good day to you wherever you are listening in the world. This is the Daily Premier League podcast with me, ah Nick Britton. And there's only been one show in town over the last 18 or so hours here in the Daily Premier League.
00:00:28
Global Sports Podcast Network
And that is news that broke overnight. that Nottingham Forest had sacked their manager, Nuno Espirito Santo. And that news was followed very, very quickly. that The news that they had hired to replace him and Postacoglu, the former Tottenham boss, of course, Postacoglu, left Tottenham at the end of last season, having won the Europa League.
00:00:50
Global Sports Podcast Network
So a big change overnight and we're going to spend the next few minutes really just having a look at how this has happened, why it's happened and indeed what happens next at the city ground.
Owner's Ambitions and Resulting Tensions
00:01:04
Global Sports Podcast Network
Let's start then with what's gone on. Well, this all started. in a roundabout way at the back end of last season when Nottingham Forest were playing Leicester City. And by then, the Nottingham Forest owner evange lacos Evangelos Maranacas had already really been targeting Champions League football for Forest. He had put the club in a kind of trust to take away ownership from him on the basis that under UEFA rules, you can't have two clubs in the same competition. And Olympiacos were already going there as well.
00:01:36
Global Sports Podcast Network
So he he very much thought for us were going to make it into the a Champions League. Didn't quite happen. And a flashpoint for that was this two-all draw Leicester at the end of last season, where...
00:01:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
and I'm sure you're aware of all of this, ah the Forest striker, Tayo, got injured right at the end of the game. There was some confusion over his injury and his a ability to carry on. He couldn't carry on in the end, and Forest had already made their substitution, so they had to play essentially with 10 men.
00:02:02
Global Sports Podcast Network
And at the end of the game, Maranaka was seen very much storming onto the pitch. Regardless of what the Forest PR machine went to go on and say and claim, oh no, he was just showing concern. He wasn't. he was Well, he might have been.
00:02:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
sure he was concerned. But he was also quite clearly very angry. And he confronted Nuno. And there was quite clearly a flashpoint. Now, obviously, once the PR people have got hold of this, they all said the same thing, which is, well, no, it's fine. They're all okay. They're all best mates. They're just all passionate and want the same thing for the club.
00:02:29
Global Sports Podcast Network
Fine. Okay. But it made headlines and everybody was talking about it.
Communication Breakdown and Transfer Control Issues
00:02:34
Global Sports Podcast Network
Fast forward over a few weeks and Edu comes into play as a kind of director of football, if you like, across all of Marinakis' football clubs, including Forest.
00:02:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
And that puts a barrier in between ah the manager, the current manager, Nuno, and Maranakis and suddenly these daily conversations that they've been having all of last season suddenly aren't happening any anymore and the various communications tend to be going through Edu Nuno seems to be also losing control, what control he had, on the transfers coming in and out at the club.
00:03:13
Global Sports Podcast Network
That, again, was highlighted as generally accepted. He didn't want Douglas Luiz. He wanted Adama Traore towards the end of the window. i mean, Forrest signed a lot of players, it should be said. And then we had this extraordinary press conference just before the start of the season where where Nuno essentially said, well, my relationship with the manager, and with the chairman rather, broken down.
00:03:35
Global Sports Podcast Network
And we used talk every day. We don't talk every day. It's becoming a lot more difficult. And it felt like at that moment in time that he had had enough, that he was on the brink of getting sacked anyway, and he was just having his say before it happened.
00:03:53
Global Sports Podcast Network
Fast forward a couple of weeks, Forest's start the season been okay. They beat Brentford very comfortably in their first game, got a decent one-all at Sellers Park against Palace in their second game, and then lost at home, rather humiliatingly, against West Ham 3-0 just before the international break. And after that game...
00:04:10
Global Sports Podcast Network
Nuno said, yes, I'm having talks with the chairman during the international break and we'll see what happens from there. Now, speculation has been growing and growing and growing that Nuno would be out of a job because you don't go public with those kind of things about your boss unless you're expecting the consequences. And there's been a lot of talk today about Has he engineered his own exit? Has he done this deliberately because he didn't want to do the job anymore?
00:04:37
Global Sports Podcast Network
Questions around, this is a smart thing to do because he he didn't want to walk out because you don't get paid the rest of your contract, whereas you do if you get sacked. all of those All of those kind of things. It turns out also that these clear-the-air talks just didn't happen.
00:04:53
Global Sports Podcast Network
Didn't even get the chance. And so Nuno finds himself out on his ear. Whether he's happy about finding himself out on his ear or unhappy about it, well, we don't know. We may never find out.
00:05:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
But the reality is Maranakis pulled the trigger and I think there was a sense that he was always happy going to pull the trigger because he's not the sort of chairman and owner who takes kindly to people disagreeing with him, less so disagreeing with him in the public domain in front of the world's media.
00:05:28
Global Sports Podcast Network
And I think if you are Nuno, you know what's coming if you take the decision to say what he said.
00:05:37
Global Sports Podcast Network
So at the time we wondered where is all this coming from? ah think the general acceptance is now that he kind of knew where his job was going. He didn't really want to do it anymore. And he's either being blatantly honest or he's just being whinging or or he's he's he's been very smart about it and he knew exactly what was coming and he knew exactly the effect that his words would have.
00:06:00
Global Sports Podcast Network
So that's the first bit of this. And that brings us up to where we were, well, going to bed last night,
Midnight Announcement of Managerial Changes
00:06:08
Global Sports Podcast Network
I guess. I recorded this podcast yesterday evening and there was nothing in the wind blowing at that stage. But as I say, we woke up to the news here in the UK of a tweet that Nottingham Forest put out just after midnight saying that they had departed or sorry, they had parted.
00:06:23
Global Sports Podcast Network
with Nuno Espirito Santo. A very odd time to put out a media statement, but I think reports had surfaced in Portugal already and they weren't really left with any choice. They had to play their hand.
00:06:39
Global Sports Podcast Network
I could have done it this morning, but, you know, there we are. And that was that. That was that. We didn't know at this stage quite what What was coming next?
00:06:52
Global Sports Podcast Network
As it transpires, they've been talking to Ange all along. And we're going to find out in just a moment why he's appointed Ange Postacoglu, what it means for Nottingham Forest, what it means for the current set up there, and what we're really it's going to go to expect next.
00:07:10
Global Sports Podcast Network
That's all coming in just a moment.
Postacoglu's Career Journey and Achievements
00:08:04
Global Sports Podcast Network
Welcome back to the Daily Premier League. Yeah, we're talking, of course we're talking about the only story in town today, and that is the sacking of Nuno Espirito Santo from Nottingham Forest and the appointment subsequently of Ange Postacoglu.
00:08:17
Global Sports Podcast Network
Now we're going to look at, well, let's look at why. Why don't do this? Why don't we look at why? and then we're going to look at what it means for the forest current forest team and current forest setup. So Ange Postacoglu, Has had a pretty successful career.
00:08:31
Global Sports Podcast Network
If you look at his time in management, he was in Australia for a long while. He was did some club stuff and then was manager of Australia between 2013 and 2017. Had a little spell in ah Greece in that time, and that's important. We're going to come back to that in just a moment because he's, course, of Greek heritage.
00:08:53
Global Sports Podcast Network
Had three years in Japan, then moved to Celtic. And that's where he kind of hit British consciousness, I think, over here. He had a couple of years at Celtic. Won exactly what you would expect him to win at Celtic, which was the Scottish Premiership twice, the Scottish Cup, the Scottish League Cup twice.
00:09:07
Global Sports Podcast Network
But that, if I'm brutally honest, is a given. Because if you get manager at Celtic and you don't win those types of things, you're not going to last... Well, you're going to last 10 minutes, quite frankly. So...
00:09:19
Global Sports Podcast Network
It's great that he won those things, but you've got to take it into the context of the Scottish League. And essentially, if you beat Rangers, you'll win that everything. And likewise, if you beat Celtic, you win anything because there's only two teams that compete for anything really on a regular basis. And that's Celtic and Rangers.
00:09:33
Global Sports Podcast Network
They're so far ahead of the rest of everybody else. It's quite painful. So what he wasn't able to do really in that time is progress Celtic in Europe and really kick the club on and the team on as much, I think, as he would have liked.
00:09:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
Tottenham came knocking for him in ah July, took over Tottenham July, 2023
00:09:53
Global Sports Podcast Network
First season was okay. Last season was an absolute weird one. It started off with... It's a bit funny. It started off with Ange kind of saying, I always win as a trophy in my second season.
00:10:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
And as soon as you say something like that and you're into your second season, then you are you are a hostage to fortune. You really are a hostage to fortune. And it became very clear very quickly that he wasn't going to win the Premier League.
00:10:19
Global Sports Podcast Network
FA Cup came and went, League Cup came and went, and the only competition he was in any hope whatsoever winning was the Europa League. So he took the decision come the turn of the year with Tottenham's league form wretched, and I mean wretched compared for a yeah for team like Tottenham. They should be fighting for top six, not wallowing down the the lower reaches of the Premier League technically, although ah not realistically, in threat of being involved in a relegation battle.
00:10:48
Global Sports Podcast Network
But the league form was poor. and But he took the decision, and he came out and he admitted this, of essentially ditching the league in favour of winning the Europa Cup because he wanted to win a trophy. So...
00:11:00
Global Sports Podcast Network
That's what he put all his eggs in but in his basket for. He played the right hand, you've got to say, because the Europa League campaign was very straightforward for Tottenham. They played some really, really poor teams and found themselves in the final where they were playing Manchester United.
00:11:15
Global Sports Podcast Network
And if there's one team that had a worse season than expected in the Premier League last year than Tottenham, it is, of course, Manchester United, who were similarly rubbish last year.
00:11:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
And so as could have been expected, chucked in a terrible performance in the final. Tottenham, to be fair, weren't much better. ah But Tottenham won it, fair play, and they won the Europa League. Ange wins his trophy in his second year.
00:11:39
Global Sports Podcast Network
And for Tottenham, look, let's let's let's look at the broader picture here. Because it doesn't really matter in the great mists of time whether it was ah an easy run to the final and a pretty easy final.
00:11:51
Global Sports Podcast Network
It doesn't matter whether the quality of competition for this season was particularly poor. What matters is Tottenham have got the Europa League in the trophy cabinet and on the Board of Honours it will say they won it in 2024.
00:12:02
Global Sports Podcast Network
And they put a very very an end, should I say, to very, very long trophy doubts drought. So well done. Well done to Tottenham. Well done to Ange. Daniel Levy, who curiously, as the merry-go-round of football, never quite stops, was of course sacked by Tottenham himself just a few days ago.
00:12:21
Global Sports Podcast Network
Sacked Ange shortly after the end of the season. And you can see why. You can see why. if umm but um Yes, he won he won the Europa League and fair play to him.
00:12:35
Global Sports Podcast Network
But... Tottenham's league form, and that's really what managers a drug are judged on, his league form was absolutely terrible.
00:12:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
I mean, really, really poor. I don't think we've seen ah worse Tottenham side in the league than we saw last season. They won only 22 out of the 38 games they played. They finished 17th.
00:13:00
Global Sports Podcast Network
They were quite easy to play against. They played a ridiculously high line, which... Ange would not change from, he would not ah move from his mantra of this is the way I want to play.
00:13:13
Global Sports Podcast Network
And Forrest fans need to know this, by the way. This is the way I want to play and I don't care. ah just don't care whether it's everybody hates it it, it works, it doesn't work. This is my philosophy.
00:13:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
And we're seeing that. We've seen it with other managers. saw it last year with Russell Martin in so at Southampton. It got in the sack. He's doing a similar thing in Rangers. It might end in a similar vein there. It just doesn't work because when sp and they had a whole load of injuries, Tottenham.
00:13:40
Global Sports Podcast Network
And when you've got a whole load of injuries, particularly to your back line, you adapt and you change and you do some different things. And if you don't adapt and change and different things, you just end up not winning games. And that's exactly what i happened at Spurs.
00:13:54
Global Sports Podcast Network
So we've got sacked at Spurs and out of work over the
Admiration for Postacoglu: Heritage and Record
00:13:58
Global Sports Podcast Network
summer. Nobody's picked him up until now. So what is, you may ask,
00:14:06
Global Sports Podcast Network
the link between Nuno going and Ange being pulled out of the cold to take over at Nottingham Forest. Well, the link is that Evangelos Maricanis loves Ange Postacoglu and they know each other and he's a big fan.
00:14:27
Global Sports Podcast Network
Maranakis loves the fact that Ange plays on his Greek heritage. They met each other. Well, I'm sure they met each other plenty of times, potentially, I don't know. But certainly in the summer,
00:14:41
Global Sports Podcast Network
ah Maranakis presented Ange with a trophy for being the first Greek manager to win the Europa League. And he is known to hold him in high, high, high, high regard.
00:14:58
Global Sports Podcast Network
He sees Ange as somebody who wins trophies and he has won trophies. So you can't knock that. He sees him as a bit of a legend, as a Greek making his mark in football.
00:15:13
Global Sports Podcast Network
And I think when you consider all of those things, there's and here's an opportunity here, isn't there? Nuno himself has presented this opportunity for an owner to go, right, well, you know what i can get rid of you and bring in a guy who absolutely love, who I admire, and who wins things.
00:15:32
Global Sports Podcast Network
And therefore, that's the link. Therefore, you can start to see, I think, Maranac's train of thought.
00:15:40
Global Sports Podcast Network
And you can see why he wants to bring in Ange Postacoglu. So now he has brought him in. Of course, the irony is that Ange's first game is at Arsenal, who were Tottenham's great rivals in his spell there on Sunday. And it will be a very tough game, no doubt. But it will be very interesting to see what he does. Because in just a moment, we're just going to run over what this means for Nottingham Forest, what it means for the current setup, how they've played under Nuno, to how they are expected to play under Ange. Because if he goes into to Forest...
00:16:19
Global Sports Podcast Network
the same way as he approached Tottenham, which is attack, attack, attack, attack. attack It is literally the polar opposite. You could not get more of an opposite to the way that Forrest play.
00:16:29
Global Sports Podcast Network
So we're going to come to that ah in just a short moment in time.
Nuno's Defensive Strategy Last Season
00:16:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
a Here at the Global Sports Podcast Network, we spend a lot of time selecting our delivery platform and Zencastle came out the clear winner.
00:16:56
Global Sports Podcast Network
And it did. be fair, it did. We we we looked at lots and lots of different things when we were setting this company up. And Zencastle was indeed the best one. It's got 4K video recording from your phone. It's got AI editing that automatically removes all of those ums and ahs.
00:17:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
It's super easy to start a podcast. It creates AI clips. It does lots of good things. ah So if you're ready to tell your story, check out the link in the show description to learn more about Zencastr.
00:17:22
Global Sports Podcast Network
Okay, the final part of this podcast, we're just going to have a ah think around what happens now with Forrest because Nuno nuno set them up when he when he arrived, when he took over from Steve Cooper. He set them up playing a very defensive style of football based very heavily on counterattacking.
00:17:38
Global Sports Podcast Network
And last year, it was phenomenally successful. And he got the players in that fitted that system really, really well. So so if you think about the the the middle pairing of Murillo and Milenkovic, their game is really well suited to sitting deep, mopping up,
00:17:56
Global Sports Podcast Network
and then get the team playing forward. They had a midfield, the likes of of ah Morgan Gibbs-White last season. he was he had a great season. Anthony Alanga last season he had a great season, whose game is brilliant when they've got space to run into, where they're hitting teams on the counter. Chris Wood scored a phenomenal amount of goals, more than he's ever scored in a season last year, because he was presented with all these opportunities on the break. And that's how Forrest played.
00:18:23
Global Sports Podcast Network
And it took probably until towards the end of last season when results just kind of started tailing off for teams to suss out how to beat them. They've been incredibly successful.
00:18:35
Global Sports Podcast Network
And everybody kind of knows how that play that how they play. And then, of course, over the summer, we've had a transfer window where players have come in, presumably, to play that system because that's who Nuno's brought in and that is why.
Adapting to Postacoglu's Attacking Philosophy
00:18:46
Global Sports Podcast Network
What you're looking at now is a manager coming in whose natural philosophy is to do the complete opposite and whose natural philosophy is to play on the front foot and just attack out yeah relentlessly.
00:18:59
Global Sports Podcast Network
That's what he wants to do. So you've got to ask yourself, right, okay, how are Forrest going to fit with that? How are they going to deal with that? or Or is Ange going to learn from his time at Tottenham and change the way he thinks and become a little bit more flexible and a little bit more adaptable to the capabilities of the group of players that he has.
00:19:27
Global Sports Podcast Network
That's going to be the interesting thing because my sense is, and I think a lot of fans are, when I've looked around on social media today and I've spoken to people who I know who are Nottingham Forest supporters, they're worried that the team that are there at the moment won't be able to do what Ange does.
00:19:40
Global Sports Podcast Network
And they're worried that if he tries to make too many changes too quickly, it could end in a bit of a nightmare. And of course, they've got a Premier League campaign to be getting on with. They've got a Europa League campaign to fight, even though they finished outside of the Europa League. and They finished in the Europa League conference, but got bumped up when Crystal Palace got moved down for the multi-club ownership issues.
00:20:05
Global Sports Podcast Network
So how's Ange going to approach this? Is he going to go in and go, right, it's my way or the highway, and you lot have got to adapt? Or is he going to go in with a little bit more humility and say, okay, I can see what I've got here, and let's do the best with this, and let's see what works with the current group of players we've got, whilst presumably still trying to impose some of his own style.
00:20:26
Global Sports Podcast Network
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens to Forrest in the next, I think, month or two. but certainly up until Christmas because the period up until Christmas, and it's not long, you know you're looking at three months, and that's a season-defining time in many ways.
00:20:45
Global Sports Podcast Network
because they could get bumped out of the Europa League pretty early. Their Premier League, if they don't win games, they're not going to qualify for Europe next year and they're looking at a potential mid-table Premier League finish.
00:20:57
Global Sports Podcast Network
it could be It's a critical time of season in the run-up until Christmas. So, look, let's let's let's have a think. Let's have a think about how Forrest get on. It will be very interesting to see their style of play. I'm very interested to see what happens on Sunday because...
00:21:12
Global Sports Podcast Network
You don't really want to be going to Arsenal as your first game in charge, do you? I don't know. Maybe you do. maybe Maybe it's a free hit. Maybe it's a dead easy game to go to because there's no expectation on you whatsoever.
00:21:25
Global Sports Podcast Network
And you can't think if he's getting in through the into the training ground today on Tuesday, what can he do between now and Sunday that's going to make vast amount of difference. But we'll see. you know We'll see. We'll we'll get it all by then.
00:21:36
Global Sports Podcast Network
So there is 21-minute walkthrough of what's going on at Nottingham Forest in the last 18 hours. The only story, as I said, to dominate the Premier League today, Nuno out at Forest.
00:21:49
Global Sports Podcast Network
Ange Postacoglu in at Forest and we'll see what happens here on in. It's going to be a very interesting journey. So thank you very much indeed for joining me for today's episode.
00:22:00
Global Sports Podcast Network
ah We'll see you again very soon. Well, so tomorrow, I hope. Make this your daily listen. Thank you to those who are joining us every day because the numbers are going up and up and up and up. ah My name is Nick Britton and until we speak to you next, look after yourselves, look after each other.
00:22:14
Global Sports Podcast Network
Goodbye.