With Sean Dyche sacked and Nottingham Forest searching for their fourth manager of the season, was it the right call, asks George Edwards, and how does Evangelos Marinakis reroute this turgid campaign?
And with that, yet another forgettable chapter in Nottingham Forest’s torrid season is drawn to a close as Sean Dyche departs, and it’s hard to know exactly where the football club can go next.
For all his eccentric outbursts and unpredictable decisions, owner Evangelos Marinakis has always seemed to have a plan. From hiring Sabri Lamouchi 18 minutes after sacking Martin O’Neill back in 2019, to swiftly appointing Steve Cooper and Nuno Espirito Santo despite both not necessarily being the obvious choice, Marinakis has always been a step ahead.
However, now searching for his fourth manager of the season in a campaign billed as the most optimistic this century, Marinakis’s cutthroat and emotional decisions slowly seem to be coming back to haunt him.
Dismissing Dyche may seem harsh on the face of it. He won 10 games from 25, has slowly shored up a defence reeling from Ange Postecoglou’s neglect and has managed to acquire points in the Premier League and Europe consistently, albeit without pulling up any trees.
However, consistency in performance, or the lack of it, was Dyche’s biggest downfall.
When they were on it, Dyche’s Forest looked unstoppable. They produced memorable displays to trounce Liverpool at Anfield and batter Tottenham Hotspur at home, striking a perfect balance, and with every player running the extra yard – the successful facets of last season shining through.
Yet those shreds of positivity did not shine through often enough to cloud the overall abjectness of Forest’s performances, results and mentality under the ex-Burnley and Everton manager.
Whenever they took a forward step, they seemed to take two back, spurning multiple chances to finish in the Europa League’s top eight and building a rather healthy gap above the Premier League relegation zone that has now been diminished to three.
After the initial bounce following his arrival, winning four and drawing two of his first seven, Forest faltered, looking completely uninspired and rather disinterested in defeats to Brighton, Everton (twice) and Fulham.
Forest’s league form was the only thing going in Dyche’s favour, beginning 2026 (after losing at Villa) with seven points from nine and two clean sheets against Brentford and league leaders Arsenal. Those results masked two abhorrent defeats to Wrexham and Braga in between them, with Dyche critical of the players whom he selected for their efforts in both games that saw the Reds crash out of the FA Cup and diminish their automatic Europa League qualification hopes.
But when the league form itself began to falter, Dyche increasingly looked on borrowed time, the final nail in the coffin turning out to be a frustrating but rather predictable 0-0 draw to bottom-of-the-table Wolves.
That meant Forest had picked up just two points from three games against Wolves, Leeds and Crystal Palace in the survival dogfight with them, all while West Ham United continued to pick up points and everyone above them seemed to move further clear.
By the end, it seemed that he couldn’t motivate the players to perform in high-pressure instances and had lost backing in the stands, vocal jeering audible as he rather swiftly marched down the tunnel for the final time as head coach.
A Nottingham lad with ex-Reds Steve Stone and Ian Woan as his assistants, Forest have dismissed one of their own, Dyche joining a sinking ship but taking on more water than he managed to offload, becoming the ninth managerial casualty since Marinakis took charge in 2017.
It’s hard to decipher whether the right call has been made or not. It was obvious Dyche’s football had a ceiling, and that Forest may well have reached that, his reluctance to utilise the bench and inability to break down a low block have Forest staring relegation stark in the face — Dyche completely unable to balance Premier League survival with the club’s European dream.
However, Dyche has experience in a relegation fight, and with his preferred side fully fit, Forest had fostered familiarity and reasonable security.
There comes a point where blame for Forest’s predicament lies beyond the dugout. The Reds mustered 35 shots against Wolves, the most a Sean Dyche side has ever amassed in a Premier League match; Lorenzo Lucca, Morgan Gibbs-White and Morato spurning huge chances that might just have saved their now former manager.
As well as lacking a clinical edge, Forest’s players have consistently been second best at the basics, losing defensive concentration in key moments and only seeming to go above and beyond in games against the bigger sides.
Marinakis’s appointment of former Arsenal director Edu Gaspar as global head of football has also seemed to coincide with his team’s downfall.
Edu has spearheaded the last two transfer windows, of which two of Forest’s three managers this season have been critical, the Brazilian also reportedly championing the appointments of both Postecoglou and Dyche, decisions that have now ended up in tatters.
Something had to change, and nine times out of 10, in football, that person is the manager; making the right appointment to dig Forest out from their rut may well be the most important to date of Marinakis’s premiership.
However, the systemic issues of this failure of a season lie beyond the man in the dugout, with Forest rolling the dice for the final time in a desperate attempt to salvage this toxic and derailed season.
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