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Hello! How many Nottingham Forest managers does it take to avoid relegation? Punchlines on a postcard, please…
Coming up:
Forest falling: Dyche is third manager they’ve sacked this season as relegation looms
Your latest reminder that, on this day in 2025, we’d have been talking about Nottingham Forest’s attempts to qualify for the Champions League. The prize was there to be grasped and although they wound up in the Europa League instead, we rightly cast them as one of the Premier League’s most upwardly mobile clubs.
I make the point because writing about them today is like writing about an entirely different entity. In the early hours of the morning, Forest sacked Sean Dyche — their third managerial dismissal in five months. They’ve twitched again because the way the water’s flowing, it’ll be the Championship for them next season. Isn’t a year a long time in football?
The anxiety of teams at the bottom end of the Premier League — manifested by Tottenham Hotspur ridding themselves of Thomas Frank yesterday — is catching. We’re standing by our beds to see what happens with Oliver Glasner, whose Crystal Palace team embarrassed themselves against Burnley last night. The natives at Brighton & Hove Albion are restless with Fabian Hurzeler. With 12 games to go, you either pivot now or hold your peace.
But in the lost-the-plot stakes, Forest are out in front. They sent the largely excellent Nuno Espirito Santo packing in September, for reasons of internal politics. They took a whirl on Ange Postecoglou before rapidly realising why Spurs got cold feet about him. They decided Dyche was a safer bet, until they drew 0-0 with straggling Wolverhampton Wanderers yesterday and figured he wasn’t the answer either. His players couldn’t finish for toffee against Wolves (exhibit A: Morgan Gibbs-White, below).
Dyche sensed the rising tide. He spoke before and after last night’s draw about his future, and where Forest are concerned, everything rests on the thinking of single-minded owner Evangelos Marinakis. That he has tired of Dyche stands to reason, given their league position (17th, exactly where they were when Postecoglou was sent packing). But more questionable is what Marinakis is considering doing next.
Pereira next?
I’ve spoken before about the Premier League cycle in which the same coaches drift from club to club without much regard for what’s gone before. Let’s use Forest as an example.
In hiring Postecoglou, they recruited a man who had looked painfully out of his depth at Tottenham. In replacing the Australian with Dyche, they enlisted someone most recently sacked by Everton. Dyche’s seat is barely cool yet but, according to sources spoken to by The Athletic, Forest are already in talks about entrusting their remaining matches to Vitor Pereira — dismissed by struggling Wolves in November. Tell me if you spot a pattern here.
To give Forest the benefit of the doubt, Pereira did find form for Wolves when they needed it last season. Without him, relegation would have bitten, so appointing him might work. But has a club’s strategy ever been more akin to blindly throwing darts at a dartboard? And if four head coaches are needed in one campaign, shouldn’t heads above them roll, too?
News round-up
- Thomas Tuchel is smashing it as England head coach, so no shock that the Football Association wanted to extend his contract. He has signed up beyond this summer’s World Cup, to 2028 and the end of the next European Championship.
- TAFC asked on Monday: Is the European Super League officially dead? Yes, it is, because Real Madrid, who were the last man standing in this whole shambles, have reached an “agreement of principles” to settle its dispute with UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe. Madrid fought hard for the ESL. They lost.
- The presence of the United States government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency at and around the 2026 World Cup that nation is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico is a live topic of discussion. Henry Bushnell cut through the noise to work out what role the controversial unit is likely to play.
- Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has drawn criticism from UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after claiming Britain has been “colonised by immigrants”. NB: Ratcliffe is a British tax exile who lives in Monaco.
- In ‘It never rains but it pours’ news, Tottenham’s Wilson Odobert has torn his left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Arsenal, meanwhile, have fresh doubts about Kai Havertz. The two clubs meet in a north London derby on Sunday, February 22.
Pochettino set for World Cup with U.S. so Spurs must look elsewhere
Now that the dust has settled slightly at Spurs, what in god’s name do they do next? They’re in the same psychological boat as Forest — get their next head coach wrong and the consequences don’t bear mentioning.
You’ll see inevitable links to Mauricio Pochettino because a) he thrived at Tottenham and b) he’s spoken openly about going back there one day, but fear not, USMNT fans. Paul Tenorio asked the question in the wake of Frank’s exit yesterday, and Pochettino is said to be wholly committed to managing the U.S. at the upcoming World Cup. If Spurs fancy him longer term, they’ll have to wait until after the summer.
Whichever way the club turn in the meantime, and it might be that Pochettino isn’t viable for them full-stop, they need a coach who is everything Frank wasn’t: a better communicator, a firmer disciplinarian and a tactician who can convince his players that he knows his stuff. Some leadership in the dressing room would help, too (Cristian Romero just isn’t it) but the warts-and-all story of Frank’s demise left me asking: How did Spurs get it so wrong?
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL: Fulham’s record run of despair against City, Milner at 653
Death, taxes, Forest sacking managers, James Milner, and Manchester City rinsing Fulham. Welcome to life’s list of certainties.
Milner, 40, will still be knocking about in the Premier League when the world stops turning, but I’ll park him for a second to reflect on one of the division’s most remarkable stats: Manchester City’s winning run against Fulham, which stretches to 20 games across all competitions after they ran the sorry Londoners ragged last night. Twenty victories in a row against one team is a record across the entire history of English football, and Nico O’Reilly’s naughty chip, above, reflected the ease of this fixture for them.
Likewise, no player in the Premier League has made more appearances than the evergreen Milner — now up to 653 games after coming off the bench during Brighton & Hove Albion’s 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa yesterday. He’s level with Gareth Barry, and it’s only a matter of time before he holds the record to himself. I wrote about Milner back in 2020. The boy is made of titanium (physically and mentally) and is a bit of a national treasure. If only they could clone him.
Around TAFC
- Robert Lewandowski is most likely into his final few months at Barcelona, what with his contract expiring in June a few weeks before he turns 38. They’ll need a top-notch forward to replace him — but their famous academy, La Masia, isn’t good at producing No 9s. Laia Cervello Herrero is here to tell us why not (and it’s partly because Barca don’t actually want to).
- He’s a firebrand, but he’s got a sharp tactical mind — so after quitting Marseille yesterday, which job would suit Roberto De Zerbi? Tim Spiers thinks the Premier League should take another punt on the former Brighton coach. Personally, I think De Zerbi back home in Italy’s Serie A, where he managed Sassuolo among others, would be fun.
- Sintra is a beautiful little town in Portugal. I went there years ago. It also has a fourth-division football team, now in the hands of a former RB Leipzig employee and a hardcore analytics team. They outlined the purpose of their rather random investment to Mark Carey.
- Given he’s on course to hit 1,000, I wouldn’t have fancied trying to pick the best of Cristiano Ronaldo’s career goals. But the folks at Tifo Football are brave like that, so they’ve had a go. And you know what? Their choice is spot-on.
- Most clicked in Wednesday’s TAFC: Spurs dumping Frank.
Catch a match
(Selected games; kick-offs 3pm ET/8pm UK time unless stated)
Premier League Brentford vs Arsenal — Peacock Premium/TNT Sports.
Copa del Rey semi-final, first leg Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona — ESPN/ITV.
Women’s Champions League knockout phase, first legs Wolfsburg vs Juventus, 12.45pm/5.45pm — Paramount+ (U.S. only); Atletico Madrid vs Manchester United — Paramount+/Disney+.
And finally…
On the rare occasions when goalkeepers take penalties, they tend not to mess about. It’s usually head down, laces through the ball; brute force over precision.
That was Vanja Milinkovic-Savic’s tactic on Tuesday when the Coppa Italia quarter-final between Napoli and Como went to a shootout. His finish for Napoli, above, counted for nothing since Como held their nerve and progressed to the semis, but the giant Serbian (all 6ft 8in/202cm of him) took no prisoners — and between the power, the spin and two deflections off the frame of the goal, has a penalty ever been harder to save?