Ange Postecoglou has been sacked by Nottingham Forest after 40 days in charge, 18 minutes after Saturday’s 3-0 defeat by Chelsea.
The club posted on social media: “Nottingham Forest Football Club can confirm that after a series of disappointing results and performances, Ange Postecoglou has been relieved of his duties as head coach with immediate effect. The club will make no further comment at this time.”
A resounding chorus of boos met the final whistle and Postecoglou cut a lone figure near the centre circle as he applauded the handful of Forest fans who had stayed behind.
Chelsea’s Pedro Neto got a goal and an assist within three minutes in the second half at the City Ground and though the visitors were reduced to 10 men late on when Malo Gusto was sent off, they kept a clean sheet as the win lifted Enzo Maresca’s Chelsea to fourth.
“I feel very sorry. It’s always a shame,” Maresca told TNT Sports. “Unfortunately, it’s a business where you need to win games. For all of us, it’s the same consequences.”
Nottingham Forest’s captain, Ryan Yates, told BBC Sport: “We’re all extremely disappointed with how recent results are going. It’s down to us individually to look at ourselves in the mirror and do everything we can to turn it around.
“That’s the nature of football. Results have not been good enough. As players we have to take massive responsibility, collectively as a group we have to do more. We have to get on the training pitch look for the 1%, the fine margins. We owe it to the fans to put in a good performance on Thursday.”
Yates said Postecoglou had come into Forest’s dressing room to speak about the game: “He was extremely disappointed like us all. I did some running, came back in and the news was out. When you’re having such bad results it’s never a massive surprise. It’s disappointing for us as players. We can do more, we can do better. We need to dust ourselves down really quickly. Whatever steps the club take we need to be fully behind it.”
Postecoglou had delivered a defiant speech on Friday and said if given the time “the story always ends the same … me with a trophy”. Evangelos Marinakis, Forest’s owner, however, decided to terminate the story early.
Marinakis left his seat in the directors’ box and the stadium around the 60th minute, at which point Forest trailed 2-0. A senior official informed Postecoglou of his dismissal within minutes of the final whistle and the Australian said his goodbyes in the Forest dressing room and wished the squad luck for the future before departing the City Ground.
The head coach was appointed on 9 September after the acrimonious parting of the ways between Nuno Espírito Santo and Marinakis. Postecoglou, the No 1 target for Marinakis, leaves with Forest one point and one place above the relegation zone, having failed to win any of his eight games in charge.
Postecoglou’s reign is the shortest in Premier League history, the unwanted record previously held by Les Reed, who had 41 days at Charlton in 2006. Postecoglou has taken charge of the second-fewest Premier League matches, his five games one more than Frank de Boer at Crystal Palace in 2017.
The Australian, sacked by Tottenham in June, started with a 3-0 defeat at Arsenal, then saw Forest surrender a 2-0 half-time lead at Swansea in the Carabao Cup, losing to two added-time goals. A 1-1 draw at Burnley was followed by Real Betis scoring a late equaliser in a 2-2 Europa League draw, after which Forest lost four times in a row: at home to Sunderland and Midtjylland, then at Newcastle, before Saturday’s defeat by Chelsea.
Fans had chanted for the 60-year-old to be sacked after the Europa League loss to Midtjylland and there werechants last week in support of Nuno, who led the club into Europe by finishing seventh last season. The anti-Postecoglou chants were repeated after Forest fell behind to Chelsea.
Postecoglou had insisted after the Newcastle game that Forest were making progress under him. “I get that it’s part of the fanfare of the Premier League that it needs one manager to be in the spotlight,” he said.
“If people want to assess me three and a half weeks into the job, there’s nothing I can say or do that will change that. But what I have seen and felt in this period is that we are heading in the direction I want us to. The results will come.”
(Guardian)
