The English Football Thread

[Vesper 30,289]

Ange Postecoglou appointed Nottingham Forest head coach after Nuno exit

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6425702/2025/09/09/ange-postecoglou-nottingham-forest-manager/

 

Ange Postecoglou has been appointed Nottingham Forest head coach after Nuno Espirito Santo was relieved of his duties.

Postecoglou will be in the dugout for Forest’s visit to Arsenal in the Premier League on Saturday, with the Australian set to be joined by several of his former Tottenham Hotspur coaching staff.

The 60-year-old emerged as a leading contender to replace Nuno at the City Ground, having parted company with Spurs in June — weeks after winning the Europa League title with the north London club.

“We are bringing a coach to the club who has a proven and consistent record of winning trophies,” Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis said upon the appointment.

“His experience of coaching teams at the highest level, along with his desire to build something special with us at Forest, makes him a fantastic person to help us on our journey and achieve consistently all our ambitions.

“After gaining promotion to the Premier League, then building consistently season after season to secure European football, we now must take the right step to compete with the very best and challenge for trophies. Ange has the credentials and the track-record to do this, and we are excited he is joining us on our ambitious journey.”

Postecoglou has been out of management since leaving Tottenham. He had contact from Al Ahli who considered him a candidate for a managerial change but it was not pursued, while he was contacted by Brentford, who appointed Keith Andrews, about replacing Thomas Frank this summer.

Postecoglou’s dismissal came after leading the north London club to a first major trophy in 17 years with victory over Manchester United in the Europa League final. However, the club finished 17th in the top flight, and their total of 22 losses was the most of any team not to be relegated in a 38-game Premier League season.

 

Postecoglou guided Spurs to their first trophy in 17 years in May (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Postecoglou spent two decades managing in Australia across multiple clubs and the nation’s youth sides, before coaching the Australia international side between 2013 and 2017.

He went on to coach Japanese side Yokohama F. Marinos, with whom he won the J-League title in 2019, and winning five domestic trophies — including the Scottish league title in each season — across two seasons at Celtic.

He guided Spurs to a fifth-place finish in his first season in charge in 2023-24, but the following campaign saw a notable drop in domestic form despite winning the Europa League title.

What You Should Read Next

Nuno Espirito Santo’s Nottingham Forest exit feels unnecessary, potentially damaging and all just pretty sad

For a little while, on the surface at least, Nottingham Forest seemed like it was a relatively serene place to be. Not now

Nottingham Forest owner Marinakis had recently praised Postecoglou, who has Greek heritage and previously managed Panachaiki in the nation’s lower divisions.

“What I want to say about Ange is that he has spoken about Greece many times, he is proud to be Greek and in the great success he had with Tottenham by winning the Europa League, he spoke about Greece,” Marinakis said of Postecoglou when presenting the head coach with an award in Greece in July, as cited by Neos Kosmos.

“A man who not only does not hide his origin but is also proud of it. What he achieved, he did with a team that has not won any titles, it has had a very difficult time in recent years. In this huge success that the whole world saw, he promoted Greece.”

Nuno had led the club to a seventh-place finish last season, and qualified for the Europa League following Crystal Palace’s demotion to the Conference League — the first time Forest will play in Europe for 30 years.

The Athletic reported on August 23 that a major fallout had occurred between Nuno and Forest’s new global head of football Edu , with their relationship in a potentially irreparable state.

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A row between Nuno and Edu at Nottingham Forest has sparked recent discontent over the state of the club's squad

The internal conflict had been ongoing for months, and in that time Nuno was outspoken in the media about his relationship with Forest owner Marinakis, saying ahead of his side’s match against Crystal Palace it had “changed” and that they were “not as close”. This was followed by Marinakis saying Nuno was the right person for the job a week later.

Nuno had also spoken about his disappointment with the club’s summer transfer business, saying he was “very worried” about his squad on the eve of the new campaign. The club moved quickly in subsequent weeks to complete a club-record deal for Omari Hutchinson from Ipswich Town, while also signing James McAtee, Arnaud Kalimuendo and Douglas Luiz among their 13 summer incomings.

Forest have picked up four points in their opening three Premier League matches, with Nuno’s final game in charge the 3-0 home defeat to West Ham United prior to the international break.

Additional reporting from Guillermo Rai

---

Will Forest get the dogmatic or pragmatic Postecoglou?

Analysis by The Athletic’s Duncan Alexander

The question for Nottingham Forest is which Ange Postecoglou are they going to get?

Will it be the early Tottenham-era Ange, the high-line enthusiast who won the Premier League manager of the month award in his first three months at the club, who saw his team score two or more goals in each of his first seven games in charge and who made the best start after 10 games (winning eight, with two draws) of any manager in the competition’s history.

Could it be the mid-era Ange, who saw a squad increasingly susceptible to injury, particularly in defence, and who recorded more defeats (22) than any other non-relegated side had ever done before in a 20-team season. The resulting 17th-place finish was Tottenham’s lowest since they were relegated from the English top-flight in 1977.

Or are Forest banking on getting the (very) late-era Ange, the man who saw the opportunity of once again winning a trophy in his second season, and did so by getting Spurs to repeatedly shut up shop in the latter stages of the 2024-25 Europa League.

His side had three shots in the final against Manchester United and scored with the only one that was directed on target. It was light years from his initial approach in 2023 but it showed a level of pragmatism and nous that Forest — now in the Europa League themselves — could certainly benefit from.

[Vesper 30,289]

England are missing around £1 billion total buy cost worth of players with these 10

  
Jude Bellingham 
Bukayo Saka 
Cole Palmer  
Phil Foden 
Trent Alexander-Arnold  
Ethan Nwaneri
Levi Colwill  
Kobbie Mainoo  
Jarrad Branthwaite 
Adam Wharton  

[Vesper 30,289]

nil 2

Noni

[Fulham Broadway 17,360]

Ex-Premier League referee David Coote pleads not guilty to making indecent images of a child

The ex-official was charged on August 12 over allegations relating to a video recovered by officers in February

David Coote appeared at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on Thursday charged over allegations relating to a video recovered by officers in February. Picture: Alamy

By Frankie Elliott

@Frank_Elliott_

Former Premier League referee David Coote has pleaded not guilty to making an indecent image of a child. 

The ex-official, of Woodhill Road in Collingham, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, was charged on August 12 over allegations relating to a video recovered by officers in February.

 

Appearing at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on Thursday in a navy suit, the 43-year-old spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth and enter his plea during the 18-minute long hearing.

The charge of making an indecent image of a child refers to activities such as downloading, sharing or saving abuse photos or videos.

District Judge Gillian Young granted the former referee conditional bail and told him to appear at Nottingham Crown Court for a further hearing on October 

Coote was sacked by Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) in December, after a video of comments he had made about ex-Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp in 2020 came to light.

In August this year he was given an eight-week suspension by the Football Association over the Klopp footage.

In January, Coote came out as gay in an interview with The Sun and said a lifelong struggle to hide his sexuality had contributed to the rant about Klopp.

[NikkiCFC 8,370]

Grealish player of the month. Was never good fit for Pep system. Wasted so many years. 

[Vesper 30,289]

A play-off shake-up would be good news for Wrexham, but bad for football

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6618958/2025/09/11/wrexham-play-off-efl/

 

Mention “the play-offs” to Wrexham supporters of any vintage and chances are their first response will be to shudder.

Six times the club now owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have competed in the end-of-season promotion deciders and six times they’ve failed to go up, most recently in 2022 against Grimsby Town.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course. There’s an argument that the 5-4 semi-final loss, which served as the finale to series one of the Welcome to Wrexham TV show, actually did the club a favour, in that it introduced a US audience to the sense of jeopardy that exists in a sport featuring promotion and relegation.

But, at the time, the devastation felt by supporters wearily used to coming up short in the play-offs — a tale of woe that stretches back to 1989 — was so deep that a straw poll at the final whistle against Grimsby would surely have voted in favour of boycotting all future attempts at going up via this route.

Three or so years on, the landscape at the Racecourse Ground has changed significantly. Wrexham are a Championship club now and the Premier League is just one more promotion away.

Surely, then, The Athletic’s exclusive story about plans to expand the number of teams involved in the play-offs at this level from four to six must be good news for Wrexham, even allowing for that dreadful record.

Basic mathematics says lowering the qualification bar to eighth place certainly means an increased chance of getting a shot at realising their Hollywood owners’ much-stated ambition of reaching the top flight.

 

Play-off changes could be good news for Wrexham owners Rob McElhenney (left) and Ryan Reynolds (Kya Banasko/Getty Images)

And Wrexham would not be alone in welcoming such a change. The proposals — presented by Preston North End chief executive Peter Ridsdale to a meeting of Championship chief executives last week — received widespread backing, as clubs sensed the door to the Premier League’s promised land creaking open a little wider.

But at what cost?

The play-offs are one of English football’s greatest success stories. Introduced in 1986-87, they quickly became a highlight of the calendar by offering an intoxicating mix of drama and excitement that spread to the regular season by keeping even mid-table teams in the promotion mix until well into the spring.

Thanks to the prize of reaching the Premier League being so big, the second-tier play-offs have taken on an aura all of their own, with the final long ago dubbed  The Richest Game in World Football.

None of this will change under this plan. There is, though, a very real danger of the quality being diluted sufficiently to damage the EFL brand. Bristol City, having finished sixth in last season’s Championship, stunk out the semi-finals, even before Rob Dickie’s red card on the stroke of half-time in their first leg defeat at home to Sheffield United.

But what if Liam Manning’s side had instead hit a purple patch in May and gone on to clinch promotion? Chances are, one of the worst teams to qualify for the Championship play-offs would now be drowning in the league above.

This season’s newly-promoted Premier League clubs may have made encouraging starts but Southampton’s derisory 12 points in 2024-25 and all six of the promoted teams going straight back down in the last two campaigns have raised questions over a competitive imbalance between the top two divisions.

The Premier League has always been hostile to the notion of expanding the play-offs, which has been regularly touted for over 20 years, partly because of fears it would dilute the quality of its competition. How long before those at the top table start questioning the validity of three sides coming up every year?

Sounds far-fetched? Perhaps. But there’s a huge gulf between the top two divisions right now that will not be bridged by promoting a team who could only finish eighth in the Championship.

Be careful what you wish for, if you like. Especially as any extension to the play-offs would mean having to create space in an already congested calendar.

 

Grimsby’s Tristan Abrahams celebrates beating Wrexham in the 2022 National League play-offs (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

This could be done by either squeezing the regular season even tighter with more midweek fixtures or putting the Wembley final back a week. The latter, though, would be a terrible option as play-off winners would have even less time to prepare for the Premier League than they do now.

Those behind the shake-up have clearly looked to the National League — England’s fifth tier — for inspiration, judging by how the proposed eliminator stage looks very similar to the current format of the fourth-placed side playing seventh and fifth taking on sixth.

But the decision to extend the National League play-offs from four to six teams in 2017-18 made sense, in part, thanks to the two-up, two-down agreement with the EFL.

By increasing the participating teams by 50 per cent, more stayed involved in the promotion race for longer. However, if the National League ever gets the three-up, three-down set-up it craves, this argument feels more redundant.

It’s also worth noting how the National League play-offs have panned out, both before and after those changes eight years ago. The lowest-placed team in the final table to win promotion is Grimsby in 2022, when, as the sixth-placed side, they followed that win over Wrexham by beating Solihull Moors.

Otherwise, promotion via the play-offs has been pretty much the preserve of the teams finishing second or third, with the 2025 final the big outlier as fifth-placed  Oldham Athletic defeated seventh-placed Southend United.

Is it really worth not only adding to fixture congestion by extending the current Championship play-offs but also potentially risking the wrath of the Premier League for such little impact?

Especially for a league so competitive already that, with just two games remaining last season, every one of the 24 teams in the second tier could either go up or down.

If Wrexham, Preston or anyone else wants to go up, then do it via the current route. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

[Vesper 30,289]

Guardiola, Amorim and troubling times in the state of Manchester

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6620274/2025/09/12/manchester-derby-guardiola-amorim/

 

On the eve of his first Manchester derby in September 2016, it was put to Pep Guardiola that his rivalry with Jose Mourinho would elevate the fixture and the Premier League to new heights. It would be English football’s answer to Ali vs Frazier, or Borg vs McEnroe, or Prost vs Senna.

For a time, it felt like that. Every clash was described as “box office”. It was Guardiola vs Mourinho on the touchline. It was Kevin De Bruyne vs Paul Pogba. It was Sergio Aguero vs Zlatan Ibrahimovic. There were fireworks on the pitch and off it, one thrilling clash in 2017 followed by a flare-up in the Old Trafford tunnel — pushing, shoving, milk cartons thrown, blood shed — after Mourinho and his players were riled by a triumphant Oasis singalong in the Manchester City dressing room.

But City, under Guardiola, reached such great heights and tipped the scales so far that the rivalry became one-sided, the reverse of its previous imbalance. Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag all claimed notable victories over City without coming close to landing the biggest prizes. Mourinho and Solskjaer led United to second place in the Premier League in 2018 and 2021 respectively, but neither could seriously be described as a title challenge.

City have been the Premier League’s dominant force for the past decade and United frequently its most captivating discussion point, but the oft-stated notion of Manchester as the centre of the football universe — “global capital of football in the rest of the 21st century”, as proposed by the city’s mayor, Andy Burnham, earlier this year — has never truly materialised. United’s loss of direction under the Glazer family’s miserable ownership has seen to that.

Guardiola spoke about the gulf in class a couple of years ago, not long after he led City to their first Champions League title and their sixth Premier League title in seven seasons. “I know what we have done,” he said. “I don’t know what Man United have done because I am not (there). But I didn’t expect it, honestly, when I arrived here with Jose Mourinho, with Ibrahimovic (up front for United), with top, top players, (Romelu) Lukaku (who joined them in 2017).”

He put the difference down to a clear, unified vision that was there from the moment City came calling for him at Bayern Munich, having hired two former Barcelona executives, Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain, in part because they represented a pathway to signing him.

 

Guardiola and Mourinho in 2018 (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

The contrast with their neighbours is so stark that one of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s first moves, upon buying an initial 27.7 per cent stake in United last year, was to raid City to hire a chief executive, Omar Berrada, in the hope that some of that clarity and vision would rub off.

So far, it has not done to any appreciable degree. There have been changes, the usual talk of cultural resets and refocusing, along with another purge of perceived trouble-makers, but to date, Ratcliffe-era United has largely been indistinguishable from what was there over the previous decade, which City dominated.

There have been derby-day highlights: resounding City victories, interspersed by days (not least the 2024 FA Cup final) when the old empire has briefly struck back. But the intensity of that Mourinho vs Guardiola period — and before that the Sir Alex Ferguson vs Roberto Mancini period as City, under new ownership, fought their way out of United’s long, intimidating shadow — has not been sustained.

It is an unpalatable truth for United’s fans that the most tumultuous matches in Manchester over recent seasons have come when Liverpool and, more recently, Arsenal have visited City.

The last Manchester derby? You would do well to remember it. It was a non-event at Old Trafford last April, a 0-0 draw so dreary that the only post-match talking point on Sky Sports was the softly-softly nature of it all. Former United captain Gary Neville complained of a “love-in” between the two groups of players at the final whistle, saying they seemed so content after 90 minutes of gentle sparring that “they’re going to go for a roast dinner now”.

 

The Manchester derby in April ended 0-0 (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)

To an extent, that reflects the modern Premier League, which can be too sanitised and too convivial for many. But City’s games against Arsenal over the past few seasons have been tumultuous. Their clashes against Liverpool, while less antagonistic, have at times been of the highest quality. Even when United snatched a dramatic 2-1 win at the Etihad Stadium last December, early in Ruben Amorim’s tenure, the dust settled quickly.

This season’s first Manchester derby, at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, has arrived with what feels like indecent haste. Whereas that September 2016 clash came after Guardiola and Mourinho had won each of their first three Premier League matches since taking charge, this one finds both teams trying to shrug off an early-season malaise: an all-too-familiar sensation for United, but one that City hoped to have left behind them after a slump last term.

Not since 2004-05, when Kevin Keegan was their manager and Danny Mills and Ben Thatcher their big summer signings, have City begun a campaign by losing two of their first three Premier League games. Since sweeping Wolves aside so impressively on the opening weekend, Guardiola’s team have lost at home against Tottenham Hotspur and, from 1-0 up, away at Brighton & Hove Albion.

“There’s something… missing,” former City defender Micah Richards said this week at an event to promote CBS’s Champions League coverage. “I had felt that the things they were missing last season had been fixed. But against Spurs, they got caught out. Against Brighton, it was too easy. I thought they’d fixed it, but they haven’t yet. It might take more time.”

It is the first time since December 2020 that City have gone into a derby trailing their neighbours in the Premier League table — and it is not as if United, with four points from three games, have set off at a frightening pace. There have been encouraging aspects to United’s performances, with new signings Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo bringing a much-needed spark to the forward line, but there are still so many questions about Amorim’s team; that humiliating Carabao Cup defeat at Grimsby Town prompted dark mutterings from the coach, saying that the players’ performance “spoke really loud about what they want and what they don’t want”.

There is no doubt what Amorim wants. His tactical vision has been set in stone from the moment he arrived in Manchester last November. To the believers, it is a sign of a coach’s strength and conviction. To the doubters, it is a sign of weakness, a slavish devotion to a system that has yielded just 31 points from 30 Premier League games. In both camps, there is bemusement that United’s £200million summer revamp in the transfer market did not even begin to address longstanding deficiencies — both with and without the ball — in central midfield.

 

There are still questions around Amorim’s United (George Wood/Getty Images)

If there is one coach who has demonstrated the value of persisting with a certain playing style in the Premier League and ignoring the naysayers, it is Guardiola. His first Manchester derby featured a debut in goal for Claudio Bravo, whose deposing of England’s No 1 Joe Hart, on account of his superior ability with the ball at his feet, earned him the wrath of almost the entire punditocracy back in 2016 — as did an insistence upon intricate, possession-based football in a league where a more attritional style was still en vogue.

What You Should Read Next

Pep Guardiola was supposed to compromise his principles, but he conquered the Premier League by staying true to them

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Guardiola’s faith in his philosophy has brought spectacular rewards for City in the years since. But is his vision still so clear in 2025? The coach who taught us that a goalkeeper cannot justify his position through shot-stopping alone has just signed Gianluigi Donnarumma, who had fallen out of favour at Paris Saint-Germain because, in coach Luis Enrique’s eyes, he is not adept enough with the ball at his feet.

Donnarumma could make his debut against United and it says much of Guardiola’s influence on English football culture that the signing of the Italian, widely recognised as one of the outstanding goalkeepers in the world, has attracted almost as much debate as the replacement of Hart with Bravo — and, ultimately and far more successfully, Ederson — did.

What You Should Read Next

Manchester City and the long summer of goalkeepers

The signing of Gianluigi Donnarumma completes an overhaul of City's goalkeeping department - and raises some tactical questions too

In a news conference before that Brighton game, Guardiola responded sarcastically when it was put to him that something had changed in his tactical outlook. “Yeah, after winning 18 titles, I will change my plan — yeah, I’m pretty sure. After winning four Premier Leagues in a row, I’m going to change the way I believe my teams should play,” he said. “Never, ever, will I change my belief in the way we’re going to play.”

But clearly something has shifted in Guardiola’s approach. In the past, a ball-playing goalkeeper and a multi-functional centre-forward were non-negotiables for the City manager, who even used to rebuke Aguero for “disappearing” during build-up play. Now he has a goalkeeper, Donnarumma, who is far removed from the Victor Valdes or Ederson archetype, and a centre-forward, Erling Haaland, who brings an extraordinary goalscoring prowess but can at times give the impression he thinks he will be penalised if he touches the ball outside the penalty area.

There have been other shifts over recent seasons: playing central defenders at full-back and moving towards players who have appeared to lack certain qualities that were previously required of midfielders (Mateo Kovacic, Matheus Nunes) and wide forwards (Jack Grealish, Jeremy Doku) in a Guardiola team.

Guardiola has talked of the need to adapt to new tactical trends in the Premier League — “today, modern football is not positional, you have to ride with the rhythm” — but the City team that has emerged over the past 12 months, after so many comings and goings, has struggled in that regard. In the second half on the south coast a fortnight ago, he and his team looked flummoxed once Brighton coach Fabian Hurzeler had changed the rhythm of the game.

 

Guardiola looks on during the defeat to Brighton (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

No manager can remain at the highest level without evolving and adapting to new challenges, but it feels strange to reflect that PSG dominated Europe last season in a style that seemed to have more in common with Guardiola’s great Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City sides than Guardiola’s current team has.

Then there is the question of energy. Guardiola extended his contract to June 2027 last year, but a degree of uncertainty surrounds his commitment beyond this season. Management at the highest level is exhausting, particularly when someone is as consumed by the job as Guardiola is. Fighting for the biggest prizes — high-intensity matches every week — can be energy-sapping, but struggling to find answers is even more so.

Amorim would identify with that. Like Guardiola, he gives the impression of feeling tortured by every setback — and there have been an awful lot of those in his first 10 months in Manchester.

Sunday offers both managers a welcome opportunity to build momentum. As challenging as the first few weeks of the campaign have been, victory on derby day would change the mood considerably.

The other side of that equation is the threat of defeat and all the negativity that would come with it. By 6.30pm on Sunday, either City or United — or both if it ends up a draw — will be left with one win from the first four Premier League matches. And things could feasibly get worse, with stern tests to follow next weekend against Arsenal and Chelsea respectively.

All of which brings a certain type of spotlight on the Manchester derby, a game where the stakes are raised precisely because the mood right now is so low. It is wearily familiar territory for United these days, but for those of a City persuasion — at least for those like Guardiola and for a young generation of supporters who have grown happily accustomed to success — these are strange, unsettling times.

[Fulham Broadway 17,360]

Arse v Forest

Elliot Anderson for Forest one to watch

[Pizy 18,994]

Was hoping this would be an interesting match but Forest look terrified and have been dominated. Now basically game over at 1-0 unless they suddenly gain some balls to actually play football.

Madueke has annoyingly looked very good since joining Arse. Been the best player on the pitch here by far. 

[Fulham Broadway 17,360]

Postecoglu never had a result against Arteta -looks set to continue

[Laylabelle 9,539]

2-0 probably game over

[Vesper 30,289]

3 nil

Zubimendi on a hat trick

[Strike 7,527]

1 hour ago, Pizy said:

Was hoping this would be an interesting match but Forest look terrified and have been dominated. Now basically game over at 1-0 unless they suddenly gain some balls to actually play football.

Madueke has annoyingly looked very good since joining Arse. Been the best player on the pitch here by far. 

Had a good game today. He was already showing here that he was a very useful weapon vs low blocks. 

Arsenal unfortunately look like they have a squad to compete this year. Pace, power and dynamism across the pitch

[Laylabelle 9,539]

2 minutes ago, Strike said:

Had a good game today. He was already showing here that he was a very useful weapon vs low blocks. 

Arsenal unfortunately look like they have a squad to compete this year. Pace, power and dynamism across the pitch

Yeah they've made signing that look like will have a impact. Wherever go all the way probably depends on injuries and all but today been a pretty good performance..

[Pizy 18,994]

1 hour ago, Strike said:

Had a good game today. He was already showing here that he was a very useful weapon vs low blocks. 

Arsenal unfortunately look like they have a squad to compete this year. Pace, power and dynamism across the pitch

Yeah, I’m not annoyed at all that we sold him. Don’t and won’t regret it because he was so frustrating. 

What could end up bothering me is that the wide attackers we brought in to replace him may end up being even more frustrating than he was while Madueke thrives at a hated rival.

[Fulham Broadway 17,360]

They have Eze Gyokeres and Noni a lively front line. 

However, fully confident Arsenal like their neighbours will go all Spursy at the end of the season if not before.

[Fulham Broadway 17,360]

Potter odds on first 2025/26 manager to be sacked