There was plenty for Sean Dyche to stew on as he marched off the pitch at the Estádio Municipal de Braga with the frustrations of the Nottingham Forest supporters ringing in his ears. The boos were not universal, but fans who follow the team over land and sea are usually a decent barometer of the prevailing feeling. By the end of a sodden, joyless night in northern Portugal, it felt like false advertising, possibly one for trading standards. It wasn’t supposed to be like this?
Dyche cannot be blamed for the dismal conditions but he and the players can be for a listless performance. Beyond a likely Europa League playoff, which will mean another away day to squeeze into the schedule, fans are seemingly concerned where this is all going. Forest were devoid of sharp edges and not only in attack, where the absence of a bona fide striker was painfully apparent. It was a miserable night encapsulated by second-half events: Morgan Gibbs-White’s penalty miss, a Ryan Yates own goal 54 seconds later, Dan Ndoye being booked for simulation and Elliot Anderson being sent off.
Forest became the second team in Europa League history to lose without facing a shot on target. They were lethargic and struggled to change gear. The overriding noise at full time was telling, a stark reminder that the initial optimism and goodwill that followed the appointment of Dyche and his quartet of coaching staff, all of whom had previously represented Forest, has faded. There were shades of the anger that followed Forest’s abysmal showing at home to Midtjylland, Ange Postecoglou’s penultimate match before being sacked 40 days into the job.
“There was a high expectation at this club following such a superpowered season,” Dyche said. “They signed a load of players and it is not always easy to carry that on. I was expecting a bumpy road, I was not expecting it to be easy. The players do not go out there to not have a spark, to not make it happen … I want the players who have not been playing regularly in the Premier League to go out and grip these opportunities and show: ‘I’m ready.’ But they have not been doing that.”
It is now one win in their past eight matches, though only last week Forest earned a creditable draw against Arsenal, arguably the best team in Europe this season. But before that they exited the FA Cup third round at Wrexham and laboured to a win at West Ham, the team a place and five points behind them in the Premier League. In some ways West Ham and Nuno Espírito Santo, a popular former manager at Forest, are the root cause of the worries. It feels like a critical period for Forest, who, starting at Brentford on Sunday, face nine matches in 35 days, with a playoff all but guaranteed. A trip to Leeds is sandwiched by home matches against Crystal Palace and Wolves.
Last year Dyche reflected on reaching the Europa League playoff qualifying round with Burnley in 2018-19, when Olympiakos – the other love of Forest’s owner, Evangelos Marinakis – progressed at their expense. Dyche described the juggling act between playing on the continent and the Premier League as “heaven and hell”. Forest supporters who experienced the comedowns that followed September’s curtain-raiser in Seville under Postecoglou or comfortable victories over Porto and Malmö can vouch for that. Which Forest will turn up at Brentford?
Dyche recalled in that same interview, on Gary Lineker’s The Rest Is Football podcast, how the competition had felt “almost like a poisoned chalice”, but his caveat was significant. “Well, it is if you haven’t got the resources,” Dyche said. Forest are a different beast to Burnley – Marinakis furnished the squad to the tune of £200m last summer to pursue his ambition of winning the club’s first trophy since 1990 – and yet there is a clear strain on the squad. Lorenzo Lucca, a 6ft 7in striker, will join on loan from Napoli until the end of the season to bolster their attack, with Igor Jesus and Chris Wood sidelined. Ndoye looked lost when moonlighting as a forward in Braga.
The problem is Ndoye is one of those players signed last summer who has struggled to make an impact. Dilane Bakwa and James McAtee again failed to seize their latest chance in the starting lineup on Thursday; those three players were signed at a combined outlay of almost £100m. Edu, Forest’s global head of football, is under scrutiny. Signings he oversaw such as Douglas Luiz and Oleksandr Zinchenko, both of whom could leave this month, have failed to impress. Dyche, mindful of the schedule, wants to share the load, ideally without affecting results, but at Brentford he will almost certainly revert to the team that stifled Arsenal, in search of a lift.
“We’re working with these players every day to try and form a big unit and the whole group is important because of the games schedule – not just the XI in the Premier League,” Dyche said in his post-match press conference. The translator then got to work and, once he had finished, Dyche did not dress up the need to find a solution. “It is my job to manage the situation. [Supporters’] frustrations are part of the job.
“This is the challenge. We’ve managed it OK, I think. But it’s not OK – OK isn’t good enough for me. I don’t like OK. I want more than OK and I’m hungry for more. It’s a great opportunity for the players because of the games schedule, but it’s a challenge as well because of the games schedule. It’s one of those, it’s always on that knife-edge. I knew when I got here it wasn’t going to be easy.”
