A Nottingham Forest player has seemingly directed a parting remark at Ange Postecoglou following the club's first victory in ten matches.
Just six days after Postecoglou was dismissed as manager due to an eight-game winless streak, Sean Dyche secured a winning start as the new boss, leading the team to a 2-0 victory over Porto in the Europa League on Friday morning (AEDT) with the help of two penalties.
After the match, Morgan Gibbs-White, who scored the first goal from the penalty spot, made a notable comment. “I feel like I can finally breathe,” Gibbs-White stated to TNT Sports. “It’s been a difficult couple of months here with all the change that’s happened, the bad performances, so we’re happy to get our first win out of (10) games.”
Gibbs-White continued, “The gaffer came in and said ‘last season, you (the team) had an identity — you had a real structure to how you wanted to play’. And he wants to bring that in, and he wants to build on top of that, and I think we showed that tonight.”
When asked if the result could be seen as a ‘turning point’ for Forest, Gibbs-White responded, “Yeah, hopefully. But it’s only been one game, we’ve only had a few training sessions. But definitely, you can feel the morale within the stadium, you can feel the morale within the group at the minute — it feels a lot higher, it feels a lot more energetic, it feels a lot more positive.”
He added, “And that’s the way it needs to be, and it needs to stay like that for us to continue and try and push forward. So, that’s credit to the manager that’s come in, Sean, he’s installed that into us. We’ve got to keep going and keep maintaining that positive energy.”
Nottingham Forest had sacked Postecoglou after just 40 days on Sunday, having not won in ten games since the opening weekend of the Premier League season. Dyche, who began his playing career at the club, made an immediate impact, although Forest benefited from some fortunate VAR interventions during the match.
Gibbs-White converted a penalty in the 19th minute after Jan Bednarek was penalized for handball. Bednarek thought he had equalized early in the second half, but his goal was disallowed after a VAR review for offside. The VAR also intervened when Nicola Savona was initially booked for diving, overturning the decision and awarding a second penalty to Forest, which Igor Jesus converted for his first goal at the City Ground.
In other news, Aston Villa suffered a surprising 2-1 defeat to Go Ahead Eagles. Villa manager Unai Emery acknowledged that his team was taught a lesson in the challenges of European football after their perfect start to the Europa League was unexpectedly halted in the Netherlands.
Villa had previously established themselves as pre-tournament favorites by winning their first two matches against Bologna and Feyenoord. They began strongly against Go Ahead Eagles, with Evann Guessand scoring his first goal for the club. However, in challenging weather conditions, the home team managed to secure a famous victory in their inaugural experience of group stage European football.
Mathis Suray’s deflected shot equalized before half-time, and Mats Deijl scored to give the Dutch Cup winners the lead. Emi Buendia, who was Villa’s match-winner against Tottenham, missed a late penalty that could have salvaged a draw.
Emery remarked, “Today showed us how difficult it is to play in Europe, to play away. This is the reason I love football, because football has a lot of different ways to win. You can dominate, like we did, you have chances to score, but if we are conceding a few chances, maybe you can lose. And we did.”
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