{"id":389527,"date":"2026-01-03T18:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/389527\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T18:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:52:07","slug":"sean-dyche-wants-perspective-but-nottingham-forest-slump-a-worry-after-aston-villa-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/389527\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Dyche wants perspective but Nottingham Forest slump a worry after Aston Villa defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the opening weekend of 2025, Forest beat Wolves 3-0 to consolidate their position in the Premier League’s top three.<\/a><\/p>\n

That was a sixth straight win, something the club had not achieved in the top flight in a single season since 1966-67, and they sat five points ahead of Newcastle<\/a> in fifth.<\/p>\n

Now, it is four straight defeats for the first time since November-December 2023 – a run which ended with Steve Cooper losing his job at the City Ground.<\/p>\n

Dyche is already Forest’s third manager of the season and the SOS went to him in October after Ange Postecoglou’s brief and damaging reign.<\/a><\/p>\n

The former Everton<\/a> and Burnley<\/a> boss started well, but the drop-off in organisation, focus and form – especially of late – has been drastic.<\/p>\n

At Villa they were undone by simple errors: a collective switch-off to allow Ollie Watkins to open the scoring was followed by John Victor’s ill-advised foray 40 yards from goal which allowed John McGinn to add a killer third goal.<\/p>\n

“You can’t give basic errors away to teams like this in the Premier League,” Dyche told BBC Match of the Day.<\/p>\n

“The mentality is there, but you can’t keep giving yourself a mountain to climb. Players were switching off to the basics. We have worked on it and shown them, but this is the job. I never expected it to be easy when I got here.”<\/p>\n

Until Watkins struck in first-half stoppage time, Forest’s plan was working, even if it was pragmatic in the extreme. Villa had been restricted to one chance – a golden one – when goalkeeper John denied Watkins early.<\/p>\n

But Forest fell apart. McGinn scored the first of his two goals in the 49th minute to give high-flying Villa a handy 2-0 cushion.<\/p>\n

Although Morgan Gibbs-White’s goal made it 2-1 and briefly gave Forest hope, there was little to suggest they would mount an improbable comeback.<\/p>\n

Gibbs-White told Sky Sports: “I feel like we stuck to the gameplan in the first half. There were lots of positives to take. I know we need points, but we showed a work ethic and desire.<\/p>\n

“We always know Villa start with a high press. So the key was to absorb that pressure and silence the fans a bit. We were unfortunate to concede right before half-time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the opening weekend of 2025, Forest beat Wolves 3-0 to consolidate their position in the Premier League’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-389527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}