NOTTINGHAM, England (AP) — New hire Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche’s priority is to bring stability to a team he believes has lost sight of the ‘fundamentals’ after a poor start to the season under his predecessor.
Dyche will be Forest’s third manager this season. Nuno Espirito Santo and Ange Postecoglou He has already been laid off in the past two months.
Forest defied expectations last season by finishing seventh after spending most of the season in the Champions League. After eight games this season, the team has fallen into the relegation zone with only one league win so far.
Speaking at his presentation as Forest’s newest manager on Wednesday, Dyche said he was fully aware that “the next move is stability” following a meeting with owner Evangelos Marinakis.
“That’s not acceptable as a whole for my job as Nottingham Forest manager,” said Dyche, a native of England, stressing he didn’t want his players to just accept “okay”.
“But the first thing we have to do is, can we stabilize the situation? I think everyone knows that… and then, can we take it forward? I think we need to get back to the fundamentals of the team, because I think they lost sight of that a little bit.”
Forest had a successful season under Nuno’s pragmatic and direct style, but things changed when manager Postecoglou introduced an attacking mindset that did not suit the players in Forest’s squad.
Dyche’s style is more like Nuno’s, but he makes no apologies for it.
“We want to play effectively,” he said. “We have to go back to the basics of winning.
“There’s no point in saying we’re going to play like Spain did when they won the World Cup. It’s not that easy… There has to be a foundation to work on.”
Dysch’s first match will be against Porto in the Europa League on Thursday. The first Premier League game against Forest will be played at Bournemouth on Sunday.
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