To illustrate just how messed up Nottingham Forest’s plans have become, it’s probably worth going back a few months. When they played Chelsea at the City Ground in May, the prize for victory could have meant a place in the Champions League. When the final whistle blew on Saturday and Chelsea won again in Nottingham, Sean Dyche was on course to become their next manager – their third of the season.
Clubs that are in the Champions League or aiming for a place in it do not want to hire Dyche. Those who fear relegation to the championship do so.
Forrest’s last two encounters speak of dreams and fear, of the severe degeneration they themselves have caused. Ange Postecoglou, as he never tires of reminding everyone, is a Europa League champion. If there was a rationale for bringing in the Australian, it might be with this aspect of his CV.
Dyche’s brief taste of Europe has produced a weakened side, with a manager who seems happy to exit any relegation race at the first opportunity. Burnley’s 2018-19 continental tour didn’t even last until September.
But while Postecoglou has underperformed in this department with 31 defeats in his last 50 Premier League games, be it relative to his squad’s talent, budget or expectations, Dyche can overdo it. He also has a track record of turning seasons (some, admittedly, when he took over as head coach) which offers an obvious appeal for a third-placed team.
In the 2018-19 season, Burnley took 12 points from the first half of the season but scored 28 points from the second half to stay up. In the 2020-21 season, they have collected just two points from the opening seven games, but 39 points from the last 31 games. When he was thrown at Everton in the 2022-23 season, Frank Lampard left them with 15 points from 20 matches. Dyche’s return to 21-of-18 was excellent in this regard. The forest can look to a similar transformative effect.
But they may have gone from idealism to pragmatism, from ambition to realism. Clubs of their size are only likely to pick up Dyche in times of turmoil, and Forrest created one himself. Dyche will be charged with keeping a first clean sheet since April, possibly in the form of two banks of four, after Forest scored 18 goals in eight games under Postecoglou and replaced chaos with order.
There are at least some stylistic similarities between him and last season’s mastermind Nuno Espirito Santo, though it’s notable that they share nothing with Postcoglou. Both favor a deep defense that might suit Nikola Milenkovic in particular, and a tendency to have just 40% possession, although Dyche’s teams can still have less than that. Chris Wood, sidelined by Postecoglou, scored regularly for Dyche at Burnley, although nothing like his 20 goals in one Premier League season for the Portuguese.
And that’s one of the reasons we consider Dyche to be the downgraded coach they fired six weeks ago. Also, Nuno’s brand of football is better: certainly on the counter attack. When Dyche left Everton, an appalling statistic was that they had scored just 26 free-play goals in the Premier League in a season and a half. Everyone else who was in the department that long had at least 56.
Dyche worked under budget constraints at Burnley and at austerity-era Everton. He argues that he did not have the opportunity to develop further. The counter argument is that he has trapped himself and his teams in a straitjacket. He can play 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, but without flair.
Now he inherits players of the caliber of Elliott Anderson and Morgan Gibbs-White. It has also been testament to him that he has brought in expensive summer signings such as James McAtee and Omri Hutchinson, who have so far been underutilized and are not Dyche specific players.
There are football questions, but there are also management questions. Dyche had a long life at Turf Moor. At Goodison Park, obsolescence began much earlier. At Burnley, there seemed to be a shared commitment between players who realized they might not have a long Premier League career anywhere else. But Forest has a higher brand of player. They are less committed to buy into Deutsche Ball and Deutsche itself.
And not, perhaps, Forest as a club. The sense that Dyche has a ceiling, and apart from a season in which Burnley finished seventh, is very low, is why he can be seen as a specialist in staying put as a manager who can forge an exciting future. It would be instructive if a club that sacked its last manager after 39 days actually stuck with him for several seasons.
What can be said is that Dyche has shown considerable commitment to getting the Forest job: moving to Nottingham, attending many games when Steve Cooper was under pressure, talking about his time as a trainee at Forest and his influence on Brian Clough, who paid him £10 to look after his garden. He is not subtle about it, but he is one of the most subtle people. His football, too, is rarely subtle and rarely conjures up fluff.
Dyche being Dyche, there’s a sense of practicality, but a romantic return to football’s least romantic of figures, whose mates, Ian Vaughan and Steve Stone, had fine careers for the club in the 1990s. Indeed, the long-suffering Van has had a flat share with the Daeche. The loyal assistant even moved to Tenerife with Dyche after leaving Everton.
Evangelos Marinakis’ jungle craziness and the way they got themselves into the crisis may have been all it took to get them to send for Dyche. But in the short term, after all, a manager who almost certainly sees Anjabal as a full-blown jerk might bring some common sense. But then there is the challenge of playing better football and satisfying the seemingly tough Marinaki.
