Nottingham Forest will start Premier League match day 11 in the relegation places, after a late equaliser for Manchester United at the City Ground left them four points from safety. Sean Dyche’s men looked set to finally find their second win of the season before a slick finish from Amad Diallo pegged them back to a 2-2 draw.
Last season’s fairy tale campaign is now so long forgotten, Forest fans must be wondering if it ever happened.
Now, AFC Bournemouth are suggesting they’re the Premier League’s candidates to take that mantle from them this term. They’re 1 point off second in their best start to a Premier League campaign since the 18/19 season, having just beaten Dyche’s Forest in his first game back in management.
The contrast is clear between the two sides, one of whom rode out their manager’s initial wobbles and the other who made the call to bring in a third manager only 9 games in.
We will never know whether Ange Postecoglou’s sacking was wildly premature or an ingenious save from volatile owner Evangelos Marinakis.
But two of the feelgood stories at the moment – Bournemouth under Andoni Iraola and trophy winning and Liverpool giant killing Crystal Palace under Oliver Glasner – provide a fascinating contrast and illustration of what can happen when an owner rides out the stormy early tides in a new reign.
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It was crucial early on for both Glasner and Iraola that their teams won those precious games where they were the “better team”, or generated the better chances.
Our best metric for calculating this is expected goals, or xG, which shows the likelihood of converting a scoring opportunity into a goal. Palace would have to wait for 7 months after Glasner was appointed to lose a game which they won on xG. Iraola would also have to wait for 7 months, against Fulham on February 10.
For Postecoglou, it took 8 days.
In the EFL Cup away at Swansea, Forest were knocked out despite winning on xG.
This was repeated against Sunderland at The City Ground, and even again in the final game against Chelsea where Forest won on paper, despite ending up with a 3-0 loss.
Losing games that you ‘won on xG’ has only happened 19 times out of 100 games this Premier League season. 19%.
Ange Postecolgou and Andoni Iraola: there are lessons in the patience Bournemouth showed their boss. Photo: Getty Images
For Postecoglou, it happened in just under 50% of his games at Forest.
So what could that mean for his time at the club?
On one hand, don’t try to argue about xG with Celtic interim boss Martin O’Neill: “I don’t believe in it!
“If the backroom lads come up with it then I’ll strike it off the list!
“I can imagine 50 years ago and Brian Clough rollicking me for missing two goals and me saying they were expected goals! Seriously, you wouldn’t play again for a month! It’s just been made up.”
On the other hand, while there was so much wrong, and so much to fix, does it tell you something was there to try and build on?
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Crystal Palace were 10th at the time that Glasner took over, and their only points in the next 7 games came against sides battling relegation. In that period they conceded 11 goals in one win and three draws, all against bottom-six teams.
But after his rocky start, Glasner led Palace to take 19 points of an available 21. Unlike Postecoglou, he enjoyed a relieving early win over a very poor Burnley – something Forest could not conjure.
Iraola’s start as Bournemouth manager was nothing short of disastrous. His team went without a win in 9 league games including losses to Everton, Wolves and Brighton, before a 2-1 victory over that same Vincent Kompany-led Burnley broke the streak.
Bournemouth were soundly beaten on xG in almost every game, scoring 6 goals from 9.56 xG and conceding 22. By the end of the season the team were solidly mid-table in 12th and had pulled back the xG underperformance to just 2.7, reverting to the mean.
Postecoglou was only allowed 5 league games at the helm of Nottingham Forest before being sacked. Losses to Arsenal, Sunderland, Newcastle and Chelsea surrounded a lone draw away to Burnley, leaving Postecoglou with a solitary point.
Looking at the underlying numbers, Forest scored a single goal from a combined 5.63 xG, dwarfing Bournemouth’s xG underperformance and suggesting promising attacks were being routinely squandered.
One crucial difference is that Bournemouth picked up two wins in the EFL Cup during this early period of difficulty. In a bizarre turn of fate, Bournemouth came out 3-2 victors against Swansea City, the team that Ange Postecoglou’s Forest would lose to by the same scoreline.
This is the perfect showcase of the razor-thin margins of football: Bournemouth conceded from a dubious penalty and a bizarre 0.03 xG long-range strike, but overachieved their 2.15 xG, won the game and moved to the next round.
Forest did the opposite, underperforming their 2.64 xG, conceding two wonder-goals worth a combined 0.14 xG, and started a new era with fans having a sour taste in their mouths.
This meant that, in his games in the EFL Cup and Europa League, Postecoglou took only one draw and two losses despite promising situations. Forest scored only 6 from 7.96 xG and conceded a whopping 8 from just 3.17 xG against.
What next for Bournemouth and Palace?
Both Iraola and Glasner are now hot property in the Premier League, with both clubs reaping the benefits of allowing their hires to navigate choppy waters.
But both will likely also be in high demand, with their contracts expiring at the end of the 25/26 season.
After Crystal Palace lifted their first ever major trophy, last season’s FA Cup, club chairman Steve Parish is desperate to keep Glasner.
Iraola is in the same boat, with Bournemouth pursuing a contract renewal while clubs like Manchester City and Athletic Club circle. Currently sitting a point off second, his currency couldn’t be higher.
As for Postecoglou, he gambled on an environment that was never going to nurture the build afforded to Iraola and Glasner – but no one could have predicted it to be that dramatic. While the numbers and a bit of xG may have suggested he was building up to something, reality meant he did not, leaving him sacked for the second time in 5 months. “He might have to take a bit of a sabbatical from the Premier League and move abroad for a while,” said Socceroos legend Mark Bosnich on Stan Sport, “but I don’t think it’s the end of his managerial career.”
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