Ange-ball at Forest: Will it work?
They say that football changes quickly, and Forest fans like myself have learnt that in the starkest way possible over the last 35 days. Our Premier League campaign kicked off on the 17th August with a convincing 3-1 win against Brentford in the glorious sunshine, with hopes of another ground-breaking season under the much adored Nuno Espírito Santo. Nuno gave us a reason to dream last season and helped Evangelos Marinakis realise his own ambitions of getting Forest into Europe, which he promised after our promotion to the big league.
Everything seemed so rosy, and usually at Forest that is a sign that turmoil and turbulence is just around the corner. As Forest took to the field at Turf Moor yesterday, with the rain lashing down on a standard September afternoon in Lancashire, Ange Postecoglu cast a worried figure with his hood drawn over his head protecting himself from the harsh conditions. The performance on the pitch from his players wasn’t totally reflective of the mood of our fanbase over the past 2 weeks however, with Forest taking an early lead through a thunderbolt from Neco Williams. Ange would’ve enjoyed the goal, and our build up play in the early stages of the game was positive, with Douglas Luiz making his league debut and looking assured in the middle of the pitch.
Burnley found an equaliser in the 20th minute after a ball into the box wasn’t dealt with by the Forest defence and Oleksandr Zinchenko didn’t cover himself in glory in his attempts to win the initial header nor in trying to stop the ball from going over the line. Ange has spoken about trying to implement his ideas into this Forest team and we know from his time at Tottenham that he favours attacking football which can often leave his teams open at the back. We saw evidence of that yesterday, as we showed moments of exciting attacking football, carving out a number of good chances particularly in the second half, but we also saw some scary moments at the other end of the pitch. On the day, you could say that if we were a touch more clinical then we would’ve left Lancashire with all 3 points.
There were certainly some positives to take from the game, but it feels as if the loss against West Ham that we suffered under Nuno at the end of August has severely damaged us to the point where we need to start picking up wins to get ourselves going again. Unfortunately, it also feels as if Ange won’t be given much patience from the supporters at least, which is what he really needs in order to revamp the style of play while also trying to keep the squad happy and settle in 12 new signings at the same time. The Nuno sacking has divided us, with all the drama and debate that surrounds the decision, which is in turn having an effect on the way that Ange is being judged.
For me there are 3 ways of thinking and Forest fans will find themselves in one of these camps, the first is that Marinakis was too eager to push Nuno out of the door and that he should’ve, considering the success that Nuno had, appeased the Portuguese manager with the signings that he wanted. The second camp are disappointed to see Nuno leave, but accept that it had to happen given the fact that his relationship with Edu and probably Marinakis too, had become unworkable. The third camp believe that Nuno acted petulantly and got himself sacked, with the performance against West Ham being the end result of that. Now, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of all of that but we will never really know what happened unless Nuno does a ‘reveal all’ style interview in the future.
What we do know however is that Ange is now the man to try and ‘take us to the next level’. In the coming weeks and months we will find out if Marinakis’ ambition is naive and unrealistic or whether it is justified and the managerial shift turns out to be a masterstroke. The one thing Ange will need to do quickly is to get the fans on board with his ideas, and the only way he can do that is by winning games of football. The dramatic Carabao cup exit to the hands of Swansea last Wednesday night hasn’t done his reputation with the supporters any favours, although I and many others who saw that game would argue that we should’ve won convincingly with the chances that we created and at the end of the day the manager can’t put the ball in the back of the net. The players need to take some responsibility, for the performance against West Ham, for not putting away the chances that we had against Swansea, for the complacency that we showed in the last 10 minutes of that game, and for not finding a second goal yesterday despite again carving out some decent opportunities.
As we look ahead to 2 more games in quick succession against Real Betis in Seville on Wednesday evening and Ange’s first home game against Sunderland next Saturday, it will be intriguing to see how he continues to implement his ideas into the team and how that plays out on the pitch. We know Ange has previously played a high line at Tottenham, but with considerably slower centre backs at Forest will he adopt that approach again? We haven’t seen it properly yet, although we pushed very high up the pitch in the closing stages at Turf Moor as we looked for a winning goal.
What seems to be lacking is the intensity of our passing play, Ange usually prefers high-intensity passing but at the moment our build up play still seems too slow and allows teams to get back into their shape. Another key element of Ange-Ball is playing out from the back, again we have tried this in moments against Burnley and Swansea but it isn’t happening quickly enough yet to really be effective. It is such a dramatic change from the way that we played last season, although Nuno had started to shift to a more possession based style of football in our opening fixtures.
Ange has also mentioned in his first press conference after taking the job that the conceptions about his style of play and perceived stubbornness to only play a high risk attacking style of football are misconstrued and cited that he has played many different styles across his managerial career. Tottenham’s 2024/25 Europa League campaign is a good example of this as we saw them adopt a more pragmatic style of football in the competition that they ended up winning under Ange. So maybe we will see some elements of Ange-Ball in it’s ‘purest’ form, but other aspects of our game may not reflect what we saw at Tottenham in the Premier League last season. You would expect that he has learnt some lessons from their failings in the league last season and that our football hopefully won’t be so suicidal.
The thing that we need most at Forest right now is unity, which ever way you look at what has happened over the past few weeks at the club it has clearly caused division and fragmentation across the fanbase. I’m sure the players will feel it too, the mood has dropped and the only way we can find our momentum again is by uniting as a club and getting behind Ange and the team. They will obviously need to do their bit and start finding ways to win again, but as supporters we have to stay positive, have some patience and trust the process. Obviously if things don’t improve in the short term then it may get ugly but you have to remain hopeful that it won’t go that way. On Wednesday night, we will be watching Forest play in a competitive European fixture for the first time in nearly 30 years and that is definitely something to get excited about.
Written by Joe Horne
