There is no precedent in English football for the sequence of events that led to Ange Postecoglou’s Nottingham Forest dismissal 39 days after his appointment.
Perhaps you might point to Frank de Boer’s spell as Crystal Palace manager, when his attempt to implement a brand of expansive possession football backfired so spectacularly he was removed after just five Premier League games in charge.
But in that example the Palace players were reportedly in revolt against his methods, making the situation untenable, plus De Boer’s football was hopelessly naïve, adventurous to the point of absurdity at a club that simply did not have the squad to play in that way.
Back in 2017, a regressive time, a relegation candidate’s players had no experience whatsoever of passing the ball out from the back.
There is no sign the Forest players had turned on Postecoglou. More significantly, there was no obvious sign that Forest were playing kamikaze football.
Instead we saw flashes of neat patterns, we saw set-piece concessions undermining progress, and we saw the implementation of a back three and long balls up to Taiwo Awoniyi as Postecoglou reverted to pragmatism in the face of some early setbacks.
What got Postecoglou sacked was not Ange-ball, but the ghost of Ange-ball. What had supporters turning furiously upon their new manager was not the team’s performances, but the ghost of Tottenham’s and all the baggage that came with it.
Forest were competitive for the best part of an hour against Chelsea last weekend. They were very unlucky to lose to Sunderland having outshot the visitors 22-11. Three of their five league defeats under Postecoglou were against last year’s top six.
And yet their displays were cast as clueless, as impossibly poor and a sign of unsolvable damnation. It’s difficult to pinpoint why, but judging by the lack of evidence of Forest under Ange, England, it seems, just doesn’t like the man.
The one thing more extraordinary than Evangelos Marinakis terminating Postecoglou’s contract before he’d even had a full week to train with his first-choice players is the media’s reaction to it.
Postecoglou’s position was untenable, his sacking inevitable.
It is almost impossible to find an alternative opinion no matter where you look.
Journalists, supporters, and pundits who are usually keen to give managers time were falling over each other to declare the situation a disaster. Nobody, it seemed, was in Postecoglou’s corner; nobody willing to point out that playing twice a week makes it very difficult to get new ideas across; nobody leaning on old certainties that an ideological head coach needs time.
Maybe not Ruben Amorim-levels of time, but a few months at least.
It is true that Ange was never a good fit, that the lurch towards adventurous football was too sudden, and that he was always going to struggle to follow such a well-liked coach in Nuno Espirito Santo.
But that feeling has seemed to colour everything Postecoglou did – before he even did it.
The appointment of Sean Dyche been greeted with unanimous approval, as if the hard-nosed English pragmatist is unquestionably the better fit. Here, too, we find a strange ubiquity of opinion that Forest are in serious relegation trouble and in need of Dyche’s firefighter services.
But just as fear of relegation did for Postecoglou before he even had a chance to settle into the role, so too is the Dyche decision a hopelessly premature push of the panic button.
Forest are as little as two wins away from being comfortably mid-table again, such is the compression of the Premier League table at this early juncture. If they get those points in the next few weeks, Forest will be stuck with an ultra-defensive manager and nowhere to go.
Even based solely on performances this season – before we even get onto the quality of the respective squads – Forest have played better than Burnley, Leeds, Wolves, West Ham, Brentford, and Fulham.
They aren’t going to be anywhere close to a relegation battle this campaign.
Having refused to let Postecoglou breathe, and having snatched for Dyche-ball with a full seven months of the campaign left to go, Forest aren’t going to be anywhere close to the European places, either.
Throughout his two years as Spurs boss Postecoglou complained that he didn’t get enough respect from the division. As the excuses mounted up and performances got worse and worse, it was admittedly difficult to believe him.
But after the debacle at Forest, and the universal condemnation of the man, it looks as though Ange had a point.
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