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"Next level brutality": Where it all went wrong for Ange
Jaiden Sciberras • October 20th, 2025 1:30 pm
Ange Postecoglou’s return to the Premier League was far from the redemption story many hoped it would be.
After just 39 days, eight games, two draws and six losses, Postecoglou’s tenure at Nottingham Forest is over, breaking the record for the fastest sacking in English Premier League history.
Having been let go by Tottenham Hotspur at the end of the 2024/25 season, Ange earned the right to hold his head high. Battling an injury crisis, Postecoglou led the world-renowned ‘trophyless’ Spurs to European glory, claiming a 1-0 win against Manchester United to win the Europa League in May of 2025.
That being said, Ange’s decision to concede Premier League results and prioritise silverware would be his downfall, as a 17th place finish at Spurs would prove enough for then-owner Daniel Levy to axe the manager after just two seasons.
On this occasion, Postecoglou has very little to lean on. Winless in his eight games in charge, the challenge of transforming a defensive, counter-attacking unit into his signature high-line, high-press and high-pace football would simply prove too much.
With a heartless owner and an outraged fanbase, Ange was sacked 17 minutes after his side’s 3-0 loss to Chelsea at City Ground, leaving with a tarnished reputation and an uncertain future.
Ange must take responsibility
Although many would argue that within just 39 days and without a window to bolster his squad, Ange was incredibly hard done by. However, Forest’s decision is a reminder of the cutthroat nature of topflight football, and as football writer Tom Barclay states, Ange must take some of the blame in the outcome given his inability to scrape results with a Premier League proven side.
“39 days. That’s literally the shortest in Premier League history,” Barclay told SEN’s Whateley.
“A real sad situation for Ange, and I’d imagine a lot of his fans in Australia hoping he was going to get back into it after what happened to him at Tottenham, which was pretty brutal in itself, but this is making what Daniel Levy did to him at Spurs look next level brutality for a manager.
“I just feel like Forest, when they went for Ange, weren’t completely committed to what they were hiring. I don’t think Ange was without fault - he didn’t win a game; he has got to take some of the blame.
“When he got the job, I said that I hoped he’d taken on board some of the lessons from the Spurs job - even though he won the Europa League, the second season in the Premier League was a disaster.
“You can mitigate it to a certain extent with injuries – to a big extent. But even with those injuries, finishing in 17th was nowhere near good enough, and he would admit that. But I didn’t really see from what I saw of his time at Forest in the Premier League, much of those lessons being learnt to a certain extent.
“He tried to change a lot very quicky, which was always going to be difficult when you’re coming into a job where the season has already started, you haven’t got a pre-season.
“More than anything, you’re taking over a squad that have played in such a complete contrast of a way of playing, in a much more counter attacking, defensive way, that I was hoping that what we saw in the Europa League knockout stages, he might do a bit more of that with Forest rather than going straight for what we typically know as ‘Ange-Ball’.
“But he did try to change it a lot. He tried to play very attacking football, he tried to play a high line which the two centre backs (Nikola Milenkovic and Murillo), who were brilliant last season for Forest under Nuno, seemed to struggle to adapt with and I do think that contributed.
“Having said all that, 39 days, five premier league games… how can you give a manager that little time?
“When I contrast it to someone like Andoni Iraola at Bournemouth, who is doing brilliantly – I think he didn’t win his first 10 games. The pressure was less, but they fully backed him and gave him the chance to prove his worth despite a bad start, and Forest haven’t done that.
“They’ve caved quite quickly, and Ange has paid the price.”
Evangelos Marinakis
Although Postecoglou’s axing has been widely recognised as a rather harsh decision, Barclay argues that Ange would have had to know exactly what he was walking into at City Ground, particularly given the swift-changing nature of personnel under owner Evangelos Marinakis.
“The owner at Forest is quite a unique owner in Evangelos Marinakis,” Barclay continued.
“He is someone who has had a lot of success with Nottingham Forest and Olympiacos (Greek side, also owned by Marinakis), but he has gone through a lot of managers to get to that point.
“A part of Ange’s problem is that he took over from a manager that all the fans loved. Nuno Espirito Santo worked wonders last season (finishing in seventh place, earning Europa League football). Forest massively overachieved for the squad that they have, even though they have a lot of good players, to get to where they did.
“That relationship between Marinakis and Nuno broke down, so even though Marinakis wanted to back (Ange), the fans didn’t want to see Nuno go in the first place. That made it difficult.
“I was still pretty surprised to see the FC Midtjylland game in the Europa League (3-2 loss at home), when the fans started singing ‘you’re getting sacked in the morning’ to their own manager. That was really quick, and like I say, I think a big part of that was because they didn’t want a managerial change in the first place.
“It didn’t really matter who it was taking over, I don’t think they were going to warm to him. That didn’t help, and then you’ve got an owner in Marinakis who, historically, has made very quick calls and ones that can be unpopular and can change with the wind to a certain extent, and that’s what he has done here.
“I don’t know whether the fan pressure has come into it, but to be honest, based on what Marinakis has been like before, I’m not sure it would be like that. I think he would have thought he made a mistake appointing (Ange), which I suppose was his prerogative.
“If he felt like it was going to continue with these bad results, then that’s his prerogative to make the change. If you’re going to hire someone, and someone who has got an obvious vision that is very different to what you’ve had in place before, you’ve got to at least give it a chance, and I don’t feel like they really did.”
So, what now?
The question on everyone’s lips remains: where to next?
The Premier League has proven an almighty challenge, and while many forget that Ange’s debut season with Spurs was terrific, balancing both league and European results has proven incredibly difficult.
While some might argue that Postecoglou has hardly been dealt a strong hand – battling a glut of injuries with Spurs in 2024/25 and given just eight games in 2025/26 – it’s hard to imagine that any topflight English side would be willing to take the punt on the Australian.
“Now that he has had this sort of impact at Forest, I struggle to see where in the Premier League he will get his next job,” Barclay said.
“I know he was very keen to stay in the Premier League, he had offers from various players – MLS, LAFC, Saudi Arabia and a few other clubs across Europe, but he wanted to stay in the Premier League.
“Forest was perhaps the only club looking at it who may have gone for him, because if you’re a club that is expected to get into Europe, they would have looked at his time at Tottenham and thought it wasn’t a risk worth taking.
“If you’re a club that has the possibility to get relegated and it goes wrong, it feels a bit risky as well. Forest – they could still go down – but their squad is very strong. It felt like one that could work, and obviously it hasn’t even been given a chance to work.
“Caveating that, he didn’t win a game. The record isn’t great; he just deserved to be given longer. I’d be surprised if he gets another job in the Premier League at this stage, or at least, he will have to go and pick up another job somewhere else in another part of the world, maybe in Europe, to rebuild his career.
“At the moment, his stock in England (is depleted) despite being a European champion just months ago… it just shows you how quickly things change in Football. It’s going to be tough for him.”
