Nottingham Forest players can expect to be put through their paces now that Sean Dyche is in charge
Richard Garnett
15:27, 21 Oct 2025Updated 15:29, 21 Oct 2025
Sean Dyche during an Everton training session at Finch Farm on January 30, 2023
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Sean Dyche during an Everton training session at Finch Farm on January 30, 2023(Image: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images)
If hard work is the key to Nottingham Forest reversing their miserable form this season, then Sean Dyche is the man to deliver it, as many of his former players can testify.
The former Everton and Burnley boss has signed a deal that - on paper at least - will keep him at the City Ground until the summer of 2027. The agreement was reached after a run of eight games without a win brought Ange Postecoglou's tenure to a premature close - less than six weeks to be precise.
Forest look like a shadow of the team that came close to qualifying for the Champions League last season and eventually secured themselves a European adventure in the Europa League instead. It has been a different story this season with the Reds having only won one game so far all season.
The situation is not too dissimilar to one Dyche has experienced before. When he took over as manager of Everton in January 2023, the Blues were bottom of the Premier League table, having only accumulated 15 points from 20 matches under Frank Lampard.
The former Burnley boss was brought in to steady the ship, and that came in the form of some brutal training methods. Shortly after his appointment, photos started to emerge from Everton's Finch Farm training complex of players looking physically exhausted after another of Dyche's high-intensity sessions.
When instilled as the Toffee's boss, he told the Liverpool ECHO: “We’re ready to work and ready to give them what they want. That starts with sweat on the shirt, effort, and getting back to some of the basic principles of what Everton Football Club has stood for for a long time.”
Dyche is likely to make fitness testing his whole squad one of his first tasks. He is known to prefer using the notorious Bleep Test as a way of assessing where his players are at.
But if his training sessions are hard work, that is nothing compared to his favourite pre-season event - 'Gaffer's Day'. First implemented at Burnley, the Lancashire Telegraph offered an insight into what the team exercise was like following a preseason trip to Lake Geneva in 2015.
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Having followed the team to the spa town of Evian-les-Bains, the article stated: “There will be one day in particular when beads will inevitably drip from every pore. It has become known among the players as ‘The Gaffer’s Day’ – a gruelling test of fitness, stamina and team spirit.”
On another trip to Fota Island off Cork Harbour, Ireland in July 2018, the aptly-named midfielder Jack Cork described his own experience of 'Gaffer's Day'. Speaking to the Lancashire Telegraph, he said: “I’ve never done a session like this at any other club.
"It’s different but it was really good last year, it helped me settle into the team. It’s good when you’re new and you’re getting in with the lads, because you can show you’re part of a team and it does help you get in together.
“It helped me last year and you know that nobody else is going to do as much as running in a day so it gives us a bit of a mental edge that we’re doing a lot. It’s in your head that you know you can do it, than when your head is telling you to stop you can keep pushing on.”
The session is purely focused on fitness and involves no ball work whatsoever for a whole day. Cork added: “That’s the one that everyone looks at and thinks it’s going to be the hardest one.
“It’s a good feeling when you get it done because you know it’s going to be good for you, it’s going to be beneficial to everyone in the team and it brings everyone together as a group, everyone pushes as hard as they can and we get the most out of it. It’s good to get a bit of a togetherness.
“It’s everyone pushing each other and that’s what you need during the season, everyone helping out together and on the same team, trying to push each other in the same direction.”
A year later the team was in Portual, where Dyche's day of torture returned. New signing Erik Pieters told Lancs Live: “Gaffer’s day was lovely, I want do it again. But it’s part of the manager’s thing and it was good. Basically you train without balls. They are not allowed.
“They stay at the hotel and the only thing you see are stopwatches and a big speaker saying ‘go’ and ‘stop’.
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“It’s all part of it and it prepares you mentally and gives you that edge and give you that little bit more. When you’re doing it you hate it but afterwards you’re pleased.”
The current Forest squad will not need to worry about Gaffer's Day until next preseason, should Dyche survive longer in the role than his predecessor, but it still offers an insight into what could be in store for the players over the next few days.