Ange Postecoglou insisted that his Nottingham Forest would begin to take shape on Wednesday in the Carabao Cup at Swansea after he suffered a bruising first game in charge, losing 3-0 at Arsenal.
The manager, who was appointed on Tuesday as Nuno Espírito Santo’s successor, watched his team go down to a pair of Martín Zubimendi goals and one from Viktor Gyökeres. Forest barely threatened and it was a comfortable way for Arsenal to respond to their 1-0 defeat at Liverpool before the international break.
Postecoglou could point to plenty of mitigating factors but if he sounded as though he wanted to write this game off, he made it clear he thought better times were around the corner. “It won’t be months, it won’t be weeks … it will be Wednesday,” Postecoglou said, when asked how long he would need to make an impression. “I cannot afford to waste time. This is not a project. This football club had a strong season last year, they need to be stronger this year and my job is to get us to where I want us as quickly as possible.
“On Wednesday, we will start seeing principles being embedded. It won’t take long and I will not let it take long. I will make sure we turn it around because we have an unbelievable opportunity to make an impact this season and I am not going to let that slip.”
Postecoglou, whose next league game is at Burnley on Saturday, noted that the international break had made preparations for the Arsenal trip difficult, saying he only had all of his players together for one training session, on Friday. He did not want to put in too many of the club’s numerous new signings and so decided to make only one change to Nuno’s last lineup at the club. Even that was enforced by the hamstring injury that Ola Aina picked up on duty with Nigeria.
“It’s been a very disruptive week for the players,” Postecoglou said. “Seven days ago, their world was totally different to what it was today. You can’t accept defeat and you’ve got to be disappointed by it but the context of what the week has been like … I can’t fault the players in terms of what they were trying to do.
“I didn’t want to make too many changes to the lineup because I think it would have been unfair both on the existing players but also on the new players to be thrown into such a difficult game. But we can put a line through that now. We kind of understand that’s the week and that’s the first week … the first phase that we can put to bed and now start looking ahead.
“We’ve got a game Wednesday. We’ve got two sessions before that. That’s gold for us. We’ve got another couple of sessions before the next Premier League game. So whatever’s happened this week and how disruptive it’s been, we can put a line through it and start looking ahead.”
