The Winter…Reds?
The 2022 World Cup’s auspicious positioning in the middle of an already congested footballing season has thrown up a lot of debate in the footballing world (even if we leave aside the moral and political issues around its location and preparations). However, while England were battering their way to the title, Forest were sacking Steve Cooper, and installing me as manager (unlucky).
Having rocked up to the City Ground on Christmas day, and had a glance at the Calendar to see fixtures against Liverpool and Manchester United (twice) either side of a home tie against Brentford, I really, really considered just packing up again and heading home…but we gave it a shot.
First, a defensive, aggressive 5–3–2 got torn apart by Liverpool in a 4–0 defeat, before a sort of 4–3–1–2 got picked off by Brentford in a 3–2 loss at home, before scrapping a point against Manchester United. By this point, i’d fallen out with Dean Henderson for being both tiny, and terrified of the ball, so Wayne Hennessy stepped in while I scrapped around in the transfer market for a replacement — the Welshman kept a clean sheet in the FA cup against Manchester United (we won’t talk about the replay), and then several key saves against Aston Villa and Crystal Palace to pick up our first wins since September.
As well as packing Henderson back to Manchester (from whence United — understandably — sent him to Eindhoven for £0), I got a bit busy in the transfer market, bringing in 3 new faces on loan, and adding the pre-arranged transfer of Gustavo Scarpa to the squad.
With Jesse Lingard performing about as well as my brain after a 2-day bender, we also recalled Josh Bowler from his loan spell at Olympiacos where he’d scored twice and assisted twice in 12 games, to give us some more depth and drive on the wings. With these new faces, and a bit of tinkering tactically, we switched to a pretty standard 4–3–3 for our wins against Villa and Palace, before securing a breathtaking 3–3 draw against Arsenal at the start of February.
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One of the highlights of our performances so far (and one i’ll probably write about in more detail) is the ‘unlocking’ of central midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White. In Cooper’s 5–2–2–1, he was often deployed as a right-sided CAM, and looked to have been getting crowded out of games by opposition defenders. Without a single goal contribution before the World Cup, the £26m man looked lacklustre, lacking in confidence, and sniffing around the exits at the training ground.
Even in the first couple of games as we found our feet, he struggled to be effective in a deeper role, but since midfield partner Yannick Gerhardt arrived, Gibbs-White has been flying, with 4 goals and 4 assists in 4 appearances.
Anchored by a DM behind them, Gerhardt and Gibbs-White are building a very solid partnership in midfield: Gibbs-White’s attacking output is better than the divisional average, but his weaknesses lie in his defensive output over the season. There’s no full data analysis available for Gerhardt yet, but at a basic level, his passing and tackle completion rates are both above 85% in his 3 starts so far, which suggests to me that he’s taking that defensive pressure off of Gibbs-White, and allowing him to flourish in this deeper Mezzala role.
I want to dig deeper into this duo (and the DM supporting them) as more data becomes available, but the revitalisation of Gibbs-White is carrying a lot of our recent progress: the next 3 months to the end of the season are sure to be an interesting and dynamic journey!
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