Postecoglou's arrival signals a drastic change in style from that of his predecessor
Not many players can claim to have lost a manager in their sleep, but that was the reality for some Nottingham Forest players on Monday night, who got their head down while Nuno Espirito Santo was still their boss and opened their eyes to notifications that Ange Postecoglou was about to become their new one.
A number of the Forest heroes who propelled them into Europe last season must have looked at the appointment over their muesli and feared for their future.
Nuno to Postecoglou is about as radical a tactical switch as it is possible to imagine in the Premier League, rather like training in a classical French kitchen and arriving for a shift to be told you’re making sushi. It’s not just a new menu, it’s a whole new way of cooking.
The Australian is back in management three months after being sacked by Spurs (Photo: Getty)
And if you think Postecoglou is about to come in and play a carbon copy of “Nunoball” while slowly effecting change, you’ve got another thing coming.
“It’s just who we are, mate,” Postecoglou said last season after a particularly hard-headed tactical display.
“As long as I’m here, that’s what we’re going to do. Even with five men, we’ll have a go.”
The game in question was a 4-1 home defeat to Chelsea, during which Tottenham had two players sent off.
They stuck to Postecoglou’s trademark high press with high defensive line throughout – Angeball, it was quickly named – even after Cristian Romero and Destiny Udogie had been dismissed.
Postecoglou promised the system that had won it all for him with Celtic in Scotland would work further south – and eventually it did when Spurs claimed the Europa League last year.
It did not save him from Daniel Levy’s scythe, though, and that is how he has now ended up at Forest.
Defending deep suits personnel
Probably the biggest change at the City Ground will come in how Forest defend.
Just as he did when leading Wolves from the second tier to European football, Nuno’s Forest were a defensive-minded team first and foremost.
“It’s very much a counter-attack style of play, defending deep which suits [Nikola] Milenkovic and one or two others,” Forest legend Stuart Pearce said on Talksport on Tuesday.
“We saw against West Ham, when they come out and chase the game, they become a little bit open and vulnerable.”
In the 2024-25 Premier League season, no team allowed more passes into the final third, faced more crosses or made more clearances.
Yet they finished seventh in the league and goalkeeper Matz Sels had the joint-most clean sheets in the Premier League – and the chart below shows just how unlikely that is.
Simply put, Forest allowed teams into attacking areas more than any other side last year, a defensive structure that should – according to the trend line – result in conceding a lot of chances.
However, their relatively low expected goals against (xGA) suggests their defensive solidity is statistically significant.
It is no surprise that Forest conceded the most crosses into the box too, but made the most clearances as a result.
Spurs’s counter-press is a foreign concept at Forest
Tottenham’s approach last season was almost the polar opposite – as you can see from where they appear on that same graph.
While Forest, ideally, would pinch the ball from their opponents deep in their own half and allow space for their pacy wingers to catch them on the break, Spurs would ideally rarely spend much time in their own half at all, pressing and counter-pressing ferociously high up the pitch.
With the ball the two teams were opposite ends of the spectrum too: no team’s goalkeeper hit more long (over 40 yards) passes than Forest’s in the Premier League at 73.7 per cent, while Tottenham were bottom of that table at 16.6 per cent.
Overall, only Manchester City went long less often than Spurs. The result was that the London side averaged 54.7 per cent possession and Forest 41.2 per cent.
What does that mean for Murillo and Milenkovic, the two centre-halves whose league-high clearance counts were the rock on which Nuno’s defence was built?
And for that matter Sels, virtually unused as a sweeper or cross-claimer, asked almost exclusively to boot it long and stopping shots?
”It’s going to be interesting to see how Ange goes about it,” former Spurs defender Michael Dawson added.
“There’s times in the Premier League you have to adapt to who you’re gonna be playing against. You can’t play in the same way against a Liverpool compared to against a lesser team in the Premier League.
“You have to be adaptable, in my opinion, because we know, if you’re in this industry, the only outcome is winning football matches.”
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And while Postecoglou seems to bask in that stubbornness, he has shown that it is not absolute.
In the Europa League final, the crowning glory of his Spurs reign, his side went long three times more than their Premier League average. They won 1-0 and claimed a precious trophy.
He may have ended up getting the sack, but perhaps there was sewn the first seed that Angeball may have more than one evolution.