Happy Mathematical Certainty Day

Sack him off and get Silva. 3 months into next season Vitor is getting sacked anyway and Marinakis will be batting his eyelashes at Silva.

May as well cut the pretence.

I’m a big fan of Vitor: vibes, tactics, player and fan engagement leading to results. It was absolutely the right decision to appoint him. The voices who said we should have kept Dyche are now much quieter (other than his podcast mates).

The nagging things about Vitor are that he doesn’t stay anywhere for too long, as we’ve discussed. Last season he dug Wolves out of a worse hole (from about Xmas) and they survived comfortably in the end. He lost two or three of their best players and was then a disaster earlier this season. That situation is almost identical to ours: he’s kept us up, despite having fewer and fewer players available and we now face the imminent departure of Anderson and Murillo (Cunha and Ait-Nourri). .

The uncanny similarity plus his historical lack of longevity mean I’d be looking for evidence of more than vibes and a smiley face. I’m not necessarily advocating replacing him, I’m just suggesting that “what got us here, won’t get us there.” (As the wanky management consultants would say)

I think my maybe slightly optimistic view is that while there are some similarities with Wolves as you've observed, I think they were in a much worse financial compliance position than us that meant they couldn't reinvest the money they got from their sales. Whatever you may think of Marinakis, on a scale of Jeff (he is the devil incarnate who is the worst thing to ever happen to us) to me (he's given me probably the teams I've liked most in my 40 years of following Forest), the one thing we should all agree on is that he really knows how to do the financial dance required of modern football and the money to do it.

I'm not worried.

Silva is, incredibly, being linked heavily with Chelsea, so may be out of our league. Mind you, Iraola is linked with Palace, so he clearly doesn’t know his own value.

I suspect Iraola will go to Newcastle.

Iraola has had preliminary talks with Palace and hast ruled it out. I’d lie to think he’s just being polite.

With regards to Vitor, I find Marinakis’s track record actually reassuring. Firstly, we know he (usually) gets the successor in place before he sacks the man in possession, so the scenario of Silva (or whomever) turning us down because we’ve sacked four managers in a year is unlikely to happen. But also, as O’Neill found out, if he doesn’t like what he hears about pre season, he won’t wait around to see how it pans out.

I notice a reaction in me thats making me more belligerent, when I read all the revisionists about Dyche. It reminds me of Brexit conversations - when people tell the other side they are stupid for having the views they do. Please remember we were absolutely in the shitter when Dyche took over. He got us out of the relegation zone, we started picking up points per game. He addressed what he saw were problems in the squad, i.e. fitness. He gave Hutchinson his place in the side and arguable he played his best football under Dyche, see also Sangare.
I genuinely believe the biggest difference between Dyche and Vitor is language. Being able to speak Portugese in that dressing room is a huge bonus for our Brazilians.
Vitor has played 4-4-2 (which if Dyche had done would have had everyone clutching their pearls), and has churned out some pretty ropey performances (Villa and yesterday). So did Dyche. Vitor has given us some great performances, so did Dyche (Liverpool away, Brentford away, West Ham away. Spurs Home).
If you dont like the man, just say so, but stop dressing it up as some sort of footballing insight which the plebs dont understand

Nah. I mean I'm sure it helps. But Vitor seems way more adaptable. Take yesterday when we changed formation after 22 minutes. Not a chance Dyche would have done that. He'd just swapped out Dominguez for Yates, direct one for one, on about 70 minutes. Then maybe Wood for Taiwo on 75.

I'm not anti-Dyche particularly. I think he did an ok job. I think he may have kept us up. But Vitor is better.

These two feel a bit revisonist. We were shit in both weren't we?

Not from my memory, I thought we were impressive against Brentford, and then came back from going behind against West Ham in a huge pressured match away from home. Context is v important.

I guess its potato / patato. You could argue that the first formation was a shit one and exposed our weaknesses by playing a back 3. So he had to change it before we got absolutely shafted down the left hand side. Dont get me wrong, I am pleased he changed it and responded, but he picked the side and formation which set the tone for the rest of the match. In my opinion only

What a nice day it is without the doom of relegation hanging over us.

And I can watch Spurs v Leeds tonight without really giving a shit about the result.