Let us place on record that we absolutely bloody love Angeball. It is a magnificent, intoxicating way to play football.
What we’re now rapidly discovering is that it is even more fun when it is not your club playing it. The magnificent parts remain magnificent, but you don’t have to get quite so caught up in all the downsides such as the apparently unavoidable injury crises, the viewing of any kind of defensive organisation as essentially cheating, and not actually winning very many football matches.
Ange Postecoglou’s time in charge at Spurs was a wild ride, starting with an astonishing run of what were in hindsight often quite outlandishly freakish and obviously unsustainable victories before a huge crash back to earth.
And then a truly ridiculous second season in which a run to Europa League glory – one that also involved on more than one occasion entirely abandoning absolutely everything about Angeball – was complemented by the worst Premier League season in Tottenham’s history that could, with even slightly less dreadful promoted clubs involved, have been genuinely catastrophic.
As narrative arcs go, it was hard to beat. Responding to an early defeat by doubling down on your promise to win a trophy within that very season at a club famously allergic to such tin-based frivolity, and then going on to be even worse than anyone could have possibly imagined, only to somehow still deliver on that promise. To me, that is cinema. It is art. It was so perfect, Spurs literally had no choice but to sack him so that this perfect piece of storytelling was at no risk of being sullied.
What we’re saying here is that this was perhaps the most remarkable two-year managerial stint in the Premier League since Antonio Conte’s at Chelsea, when he instantly turned Jose Mourinho’s morose and broken team of mid-table cloggers back into title winners and then spent the following season falling out with absolutely everyone. But still winning the FA Cup for a laugh. And then leaving.
Postecoglou’s Spurs bit was damn near as good as that was. That’s the bar he has set.
So know that we don’t say it lightly when we wonder whether his time at Nottingham Forest might actually be even more entertaining and ridiculous. Shorter, surely, as well. There are multiple reasons why we don’t think he’ll win a trophy in his second year here.
But that flame of nonsense that burned so brightly at Spurs could be even more dazzling at Forest. And it really is so far, so good. Because right now Forest are absolutely speedrunning the entire Angeball experience. And, given the whims of their owner, that’s probably for the best.
It’s great that they’re still going to get the full experience even if Postecoglou won’t make it to Christmas.
Forest are, obviously, suffering as everyone expected they might from all the downsides that come with just being who you are, mate. The shambolic defending. The hugely costly and entirely avoidable late goals. The mysterious mystery of key players succumbing to unfathomable hamstring injuries in a system that requires all of the recovery sprints all of the time.
On its own, none of that would matter. That would just be a bad manager doing badly. And Postecoglou isn’t that. He’s an intoxicating, inspirational leader of men. Doing badly. Listen to his former players – from any of his clubs. They would run through brick walls for him, presumably picking up a hamstring strain that rules them out for six to eight weeks in the process.
He is so compelling, so convincing. The players buy into it utterly, and so too – at least at first – do the fans.
It’s almost impossible not to. Forest are yet to win a single game under Postecoglou. They’ve led plenty of times, sure, but then along came those old familiar problems we all saw over and over again at a Spurs team that spaffed more points from winning positions last season than anyone else.
But oh my, watch some of the football that has taken Forest into those leads. Just really watch it. It really has quite often been utterly glorious. Look at the goals they’ve scored and just for now forget about what came next in those games.
And this is a squad that has spent the last 18 months playing rigid – and mighty effective – Nunoball. The speed with which they’ve managed to change entirely to delivering all the very best and very worst elements of Ange’s methods is truly astounding, but points again to the fact that – for better or worse – he carries players with him.
They seem to absolutely love it. Even when it’s stupid. Especially when it’s stupid.
We don’t think Mr Marinakis will love it. Not for long, anyway. So we must all enjoy it and cherish it while it lasts. Who knows when or if Our League will again be graced with this kind of pure and unfiltered and beautiful yet so desperately fragile nonsense.
Saturday’s home clash with an unexpectedly buoyant Sunderland has become uncomfortably important uncomfortably quickly for a manager whose last domestic win in his last 14 attempts came against a Southampton side that had essentially given up.
If it does go wrong, we might not even get a chance to find out whether Postecoglou always wins something in his second month.
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