Ange Postecoglou has warned his Nottingham Forest players nothing will come easy after they were knocked out of the Carabao Cup in dramatic fashion by Swansea City.
Igor Jesus’ brace had put the Reds firmly in control of the third-round tie in south Wales. But after Cameron Burgess had reduced the deficit with 20 minutes to go, the hosts scored twice in added time to turn the game on its head.
Burgess bagged the winner in the 97th minute, a few minutes after Zan Vipotnik’s leveller had looked set to send the match to penalties. It left a bitterly disappointed Postecoglou ruing a missed opportunity and still searching for his first victory as head coach.
“It was very disappointing. It was a game we were well in control of and we should have seen it out a lot better than we did,” the Forest boss said after his team’s 3-2 defeat.
“We certainly had the opportunities to kill the game off in the second half. I just got a sense the players thought it was sort of just going to happen automatically - that we were totally in control of the game.
“It’s cup football. We should have been a lot more prepared for what was going to come and handled it a lot better than we did.
“It’s not about me. It’s about the club. It’s about us progressing and creating an environment where we can have real success.
“Tonight was a great opportunity for us to progress in a cup and give ourselves an opportunity to get that success. To let it slip is hugely disappointing.
“We need to understand that we are going to have to earn everything we are going to get; it’s not just going to come to us. I just got the feeling tonight that towards the end we just thought it would naturally pan out that we would win the game. That’s not how football works.
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“You learn a lot from everything. From my perspective, you understand some of the things we need to work on so we can get to where we want to.”
Forest had chances to build on the advantage handed to them by Jesus. Substitute Arnaud Kalimuendo thought he had made it 3-0 when he found the back of the net from off the bench, but he was thwarted by the offside flag.
Kalimuendo was not the only summer signing to catch the eye on the night. But for Postecoglou, disappointment overshadowed any positives.
“It was fairly evident the players needed to play tonight, because there were quite a few not in match rhythm and certainly lacking match conditioning. But within that context, I still thought we had some really good moments and played some decent football,” he said.
“We scored a couple of really good goals. We scored a good third goal that shouldn’t have been disallowed.
“At the same time, with all that, we should have handled it better in that last half-hour. We should have stayed calm. There was no need for us to be so frenetic in our football.
“I just got the sense we thought we would get a third and finish them off. Yes, we had chances to do that but when you don’t put them away there is always the opportunity for the opposition. I was disappointed we couldn’t handle it better.
“The overriding factor is we are out of a cup competition that really we should have progressed in. That opportunity, we shouldn’t have lost.
“We can look at the individuals within that, and there were some promising performances. But all that fades away when you realise we missed a great opportunity to progress.”
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