Forest in advanced talks to appoint Dyche

Sean Dyche has been in advanced discussions with Nottingham Forest to become their manager.

Following the firing of Ange Postecoglou, Dyche is the front-runner to become the next Forest head coach, and the Premier League team hopes to finalize a deal on Monday.

Postecoglou was sent off 17 minutes after Chelsea beat Forest 3-0 in the Premier League on Saturday.

In what has been a turbulent season, Forest are currently 18th in the table after just one win in eight league games.

Marco Silva, the manager of Fulham, is admired but under contract, while Roberto Mancini has also spoken with Forest officials.

Given that Forest have already spent money on firing Postecoglou and Nuno Espirito Santo this season, Silva’s contract has a significant release clause that has come to light.

It’s also understood that Silva’s willingness to leave Fulham in the offseason is a problem.

The Australian’s tenure at Forest, which came 39 days after his appointment on September 9, was the shortest ever tenure under the Premier League, was marred by a failed win.

In the late 1980s, Dyche was a member of Forest’s youth team while Brian Clough served as manager, but he never made a first-team appearance.

Since taking over the Toffees in January, he was fired by Everton after just under two years in charge. He has not held a managerial position.

As Everton manager, Dyche led the club to 17th and 15th-place finishes, winning 21 games, losing 31 and drawing 23 of his 75 Premier League games.

Prior to that, Dyche served as Burnley’s manager for nearly ten years, helping the Clarets reach Europe for the first time since 1967, twice winning promotion to the top flight, and between October 2012 and April 2022.

Additionally, he served as Watford’s manager for the 2011–2012 season before losing his position as manager following a change of ownership.

Sean Dyche’s arrival at Nottingham Forest makes sense, in contrast to Ange Postecoglou’s appointment, because Nuno Espirito Santo’s style of play has always been more tactically appropriate for the city ground’s revival of European football.

The Australian struggled to impose his unique footballing ideologies on a squad that was so used to playing a certain way with no pre-season and a slew of games coming thick and quickly at the start of his tenure.

The addition of a similar-minded, pragmatic coach to Nuno should in theory help Forest’s players, who were defensively strong and proved to be devastating on the counter-attack in 2024 and 25, stay in the game.