‘Hangover style’: How Ange Postecoglou’s Premier League party restarted

Nottingham: Ange Postecoglou has vowed to go on the attack in his new job as head coach of Nottingham Forest, declaring that he wants to bring exciting football to the game and is aiming for a trophy within a year.

The Australian coach revealed that he knew he would be sacked as coach of Tottenham Hotspur even when he was celebrating a stunning victory in the Europa League in May, saying he did not want the bad news to tarnish that moment.

But he said he was determined to bring success – and even joy – to Forest supporters as an underdog in the Premier League.

“You kind of understand the responsibility you have, as a manager,” he said in a press conference in Nottingham to mark his arrival at the club.

“The football club has to provide joy to the most important people, and that is the supporters, and that’s why football clubs exist.

“It’s about bringing joy to the people who are the lifeblood of this game. That’s all I care about.

“I guarantee you I can win things here and people will still have doubts about me because of who I am.”

Speaking to British and Australian media at his first appearance in his new post, and his first full press conference since May, he was diplomatic about his sacking at Spurs and made no reflection on the man who oversaw his departure, former chairman Daniel Levy – who was removed from his job only last week.

“I guess he appointed me, so I’ve got to be thankful for that. Hopefully I repaid it by providing a trophy that they hadn’t had for a very long time.”

Spurs had last won the Europa League in 1984 – and their victory parade after this year’s success drew an estimated 225,000 people to the streets around their stadium.

Of his removal, Postecoglou said: “It was unusual, because it’s never happened to me before. I mean, it’s the first time I’ve been sacked.”

Then he joked, without smiling: “And it’s the first time I’ve had an off season off: four or five weeks with the family, which has never happened before. And it’s fair to say it was as tough for them as it was for me.”

Postecoglou was celebrating his birthday at the end of August – “Hangover style,” he joked – when moves were underway to bring him to Nottingham.

“There was kind of an inkling that something may happen,” he said.

However, he played down his relationship with the club’s owner, Greek shipping tycoon Evangelos Marinakis, and said the key factor was that both were committed to winning.

While he is known for saying that he can win trophies within a second year of managing club, he scaled up the ambition to set his sights on silverware in his first year at Forest.

“I may have to, to get a second year,” he quipped.

“I do like my teams to play exciting football – score goals, get fans excited. And I make no apologies for that, that’s just the way I am.

“We want to dominate the ball, we want to put pressure on the opposition, we want to score goals, but all of it with the end goal of winning football games, because that’s what excites me more than everything else.”

Postecoglou attended training in Nottingham on Wednesday before the press conference on Thursday, and he is preparing for their away game against Arsenal this Saturday despite the players having to process the sudden departure of the previous coach, Nuno Espirito Santo.

“The first conversation I had with them was that we’ve got a game on Saturday, boys, and nothing’s more important than that. Everything else, we’ve got to park, whatever it is that we may or may not be going through,” he said. The match airs live in Australia at 9.30pm on Saturday night.

Reprising one of his past sayings, Postecoglou told the media he wanted to win trophies, and he said that his experience would help Forest compete in the Premier League at the same time it sought victory in European championships.

Asked about the pressure he was under to deliver results for Marinakis, he said: “I’ve said it before. That’s all I want to do: I want to win trophies. That’s what I’ve done my whole career, and that’s what I want to try and do here.”

He was careful, however, to counter the perception that he has one style of football and is not flexible enough to adjust his strategy – a problem his critics highlighted in the poor results for Spurs in the Premier League last season.

In a video released by Forest this week, Postecoglou said: “I love my teams to attack, score goals. This is sometimes misconstrued as me playing one way.”

Asked about that in the press conference, he said of the critics: “They’re missing everything, because they’re not watching what I do.” He said his career showed that his teams had played different styles of football, but he added that there was a common factor at every team.

“The one constant in my career is that everywhere I’ve been, I’ve won.”

Stan Sport is the only place to watch Arsenal take on Ange Postecoglou’s Nottingham Forest in a Premier League blockbuster with all the action streaming live and in 4K this Saturday 13 September from 9:00pm AEST.