For fans of the red team it’s been quite the summer for upgrading to a new leader who seems to have genuine beliefs and a determination to implement them. This month I’ll focus on the steady opening month for Oliver Glasner’s Nottingham Forest.
It’s important to remember the context for Glasner’s arrival: last season the team spent pre-season under the ultra-defensive tutelage of Nuno Espirito Santo, who lasted three matches. Tactical whiplash ensued as they lurched to the ultra-attacking style of Ange Postecoglou for eight matches. Sean Dyche’s back-to-basics traditional style lasted for 25 games, before giving way to Vitor Pereira’s more free-flowing approach for the remaining 20 fixtures.
And what, if anything, did these coaches have in common? Well, the majority picked a back four and all selected from our vast stockpile of tricky wingers.
And what did we already know about Glasner? You guessed it: he plays a back three and no wingers.
All of this is a pretty damning indictment of the lack of coherence behind-the-scenes for the men’s team. Logic might dictate that if you’re going to indulge a trigger-happy owner, you need to establish and develop a footballing philosophy in order that one coach can take over from the last fairly seamlessly.
But in the razzamatazz of the click economy and Sky Sports’ yellow bar, logic is a pretty outdated concept. Does anyone really care about long-term planning anymore? When clubs are judged just as much on whether they ‘win’ the transfer window as whether they earn three points on a Saturday afternoon, why worry about where the players actually stand on the grass?
This is the situation that greeted Glasner upon his arrival to Nottingham. It’s his philosophy the team must now adopt and it’s fair to say his fingerprints have been all over Forest’s dealings. Incoming players Xaver Schlager and Daniel Munoz have played previously for the unassuming Austrian and he openly courted Ousmane Diomande back in his Crystal Palace days. Likewise, the loaning out of Dilane Bakwa and Omari Hutchinson goes some way to solving Forest’s surplus wingers problem.
So far, so safe and coherent. The signing of powerful young striker Liam Delap for a club-record £45 million is more of a gamble, but even he fits the profile of a ‘Glasner’ number 9.
And if you can indulge one final Glasnerism… his teams always start the season slowly, with Palace failing to win any of their first eight games last season.
So it seems somewhat inevitable that the past month has been characterised by a quiet incrementalism on the pitch. The season opener at home to Leeds was a cagey, evenly-matched game until the concession of a free-kick in a dangerous position late on, which was converted by Anton Stach. 0-1 defeat and deflation after a summer of hope.
And the fingernails-blackboard sound of crowing Leeds fans returned to the John Robertson stand just three days later, this time the Yorkshire club winning 0-2 to knock the Reds out of the Carabao Cup. So much for Glasner the cup specialist, eh?
Two games, two defeats and a trip to Anfield next. Gulp.
But with the system starting to bed-in, Forest were more than a match for Liverpool and had chances to take all three points. In the end it was a creditable 2-2 draw with goals from Ndoye and Gibbs-White, but even more importantly, a sign to the fans that the way ‘the OG’ (as I’m calling him) likes to play can work, even for a club as chaotic as ours.
Such a strong performance on Merseyside also emphasised an uncomfortable truth: Forest tend to do better away from the City Ground these days. What was once a fortress; a cacophony of noise and newly-promoted fervour is now a squib dampened by high ticket prices and raised expectations.
This was the scene again for the visit of Tottenham. The pensive home crowd were muted by Spurs’ dominant display in the first half, eventually livened up by a gorgeous Delap through-ball which Gibbs-White failed to convert.
Forest only really gave the fans anything to get behind in the final 20 minutes. Gibbs-White latched onto a lovely through-ball from McAtee and his shot was bundled into the net by Neco Williams. Outrageously though, with no conclusive video evidence, the VAR referees intervened and guessed it probably touched Williams’ arm on the way in. No goal. No justice. But a decent point and more cause for optimism under Glasner.
So it’s all pretty much par for the course for Oliver’s army. And I, for one, am starting to feel a bit of hope. We have a man with a plan and before we know it, the chaos might even become coherence.
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