Sean Dyche has spoken out on the decision to sack him as Nottingham Forest head coach after 114 days in the job
Sean Dyche was sacked as Nottingham Forest head coach (Image: Getty)
In the space of a few weeks, two former Nottingham Forest managers have appeared on podcasts discussing their brief City Ground stints.
But the contrast between the reflections of Ange Postecoglou and Sean Dyche could not be more stark. And the latter might well have unwittingly provided an insight into why he is no longer in situ.
Postecoglou, axed after just 39 days at the helm, spoke well and owned his abysmal Reds tenure. He took responsibility for it.
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“There’s no point me blaming it on ‘I didn’t get time’ or anything,” he said on an episode of The Overlap last month. “I should never have gone in there. That was on me. That was a bad decision by me to go in there. I’ve got to take ownership of that.”
It was an honest assessment from the ex-Tottenham Hotspur boss. There’s no disguising his time in charge was anything other than a disaster. He failed to claim a single victory and was gone after a four-match losing streak. The sharp departure from the style of Nuno Espirito Santo to Postecoglou meant his appointment was never going to work.
Dyche, as was pointed out to him on The Football Boardroom podcast, had a lot going for him. Links to the club and the city, experience of being able to get teams out of a tight spot and plenty of Premier League know-how should all have counted in his favour.
But some of the very issues that defined his Reds spell were on show during the interview. For those who might have questioned why owner Evangelos Marinakis decided to turn to a fourth head coach of the season, here was explanation as to why.
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Not that Dyche will have seen it that way. He described the decision to let him go as “strange” and a “head-scratcher”.
There was no culpability from him, just as there had not been any during his reign. Instead, he pointed to the changing nature of football, “keyboard warriors” and hinted at the implications of player power.
Dyche’s style of man-management was questioned when he rather threw some of his squad under the bus after their FA Cup humbling at Wrexham. It seems no lessons were learned.
“I know the runners and riders in all of my career. I certainly know the ones at Forest. But they’ll get weedled out, because life is like that, they will get found out,” the 54-year-old said.
He was incredulous at suggestions he had worked his team too hard. Such an accusation was unfathomable, he said, despite also admitting the players had made that point to him.
The Reds’ decision to dispense with Dyche and bring in Vitor Pereira provoked a strong response among plenty of pundits. But although the Portuguese is still searching for his first Premier League victory with the club, the difference in approach – both in-game and in interviews – with his predecessor shows why the change had to be made.
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