IT’S THAT TIME of the month: Nottingham Forest are looking for a new manager. Aitor Karanka was fired this morning, meaning the club are hiring for the eighth time in three years. Slavisa Jokanovic is the early favourite to take the job, although ousted Ireland duo Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are also thought to be in contention for a return to their former side.
O’Neill wants to work again; Keane is open to working with him.
It would be an ideal role for both. Having missed out on the Stoke job last year, and subsequently presiding over a wretched run of form with Ireland, O’Neill’s only real avenue back to the Premier League is via promotion from the Championship.
He no longer ranks among the likes of of Sam Allardyce, Tony Pulis, Mark Hughes and Roy Hodgson in the retinue of Managers To Call Mid-Season Solely To Avoid Relegation, and nor is he a kind of longer-term, holistic manager that has been favoured by some clubs of late, Marco Silva and Ralph Hasenhuttl being two such examples.
If O’Neill wants to reinvent himself into the latter category, he won’t be helped by revelations from an interview his former Villa boss Randy Lerner granted to Josh Robinson and Jonathan Clegg, authors of a new book on the history of the Premier League called The Club.
Lerner claims that O’Neill would have been unaware that Villa had an academy had it not been beside the first-team training ground, and the owner eventually became exasperated by O’Neill’s demands to sign experienced British players with little resale value. When Lerner told O’Neill he was tightening the purse strings, the manager eventually walked out.
That shouldn’t really matter at Forest.
While the Lerner revelations portray O’Neill to be anything but a long-term manager, there appears to be no such thing as a long-term manager at Nottingham Forest. Since Billy Davies left in June 2011, only three of the 12 subsequent permanent appointments were in charge for more than 50 games…and one of them was Billy Davies.
Although Karanka was evidently not impressing Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis, the club have not been left hopelessly marooned: they are seventh in the Championship, just one place and four points outside the play-off positions.
Given that Forest’s ambition is solely to be promoted after a summer outlay of £23 million, a refreshed O’Neill, with his immediate-term powers of motivation, should make him an attractive candidate. He would also be well-acquainted with the division, given the lousy reality that any Irish manager must be.
Beyond such cold pragmatism, the fact that the job is at Forest would hold mighty sway over O’Neill and Roy Keane. Both had formative experiences under Brian Clough at the club, and the latter has plainly stated that Clough was the best manager he worked under (although this was perhaps at least partly motivated by a grudge against Alex Ferguson).
O’Neill’s reverence for Clough hardly needs to be repeated, as the ghost of his former mentor staked most of his reign with Ireland.
The question for O’Neill is whether his reputation endures the ugly endgame with Ireland.
Although Clough and O’Neill had a complicated relationship – “’Clough would be the only person who could chop Martin O’Neill down to size” author Daniel Taylor told The42 in 2015 – O’Neill has paid homage to Clough’s “magical” powers of motivation and tooled himself with them.
In the final year with Ireland, however, it seemed that O’Neill had lost the line dividing inspiration and plagiarism and at times seemed to be doing a bad impression of Clough’s famous self-regard. “Because I’m good” was his justification for a promise to qualify for Euro 2020 last October.
As his Irish reign entered an inexorable slide, O’Neill seemed incapable of snapping out of this image he had modelled for himself, with damaging training ground rows seemingly tolerated and superannuated principles, like the naming teams just before a game with little tactical instruction, blithely followed.
The ghost of Clough became all-consuming as O’Neill tried to wrestle with the limitations of his squad and the intensity of media criticism, to the point that the profusion of Clough anecdotes trotted out by the Irish manager had all the meaning and inspiration of Theresa May mumbling ‘strong and stable’.
Since leaving the Irish job, O’Neill told The Times that nobody should consider him to be a dinosaur, but his fidelity to his legendary boss has seen him harden into that exact image, comparing unfavourably to the young, dynamic and empathetic managers of Wales, England and Northern Ireland.
The great irony is that O’Neill would be a good candidate to take charge right now at Nottingham Forest, but he may be deprived of the opportunity to finally succeed Brian Clough as a result of his too successful effort to emulate him.
Ahead of a huge weekend of Heineken Champions Cup action, Murray Kinsella, Andy Dunne and Gavan Casey assess the provinces’ chances of putting a foot in the last eight:
Heineken Rugby Weekly on The42 / SoundCloud
No they’d be terrible. As a Forest fan, I think the team have been, for the most part playing good attacking football and scoring goals. They’ve been inconsistent – a little soft at the back is all. Due to the influx of cash, the standard in the EFL is far more technically proficient and tactically sophisticated league (at the top end at least) than it was when O’Neill and Keane last managed this division. I’ve seen nothing in their recent work to suggest they have the tactical savvy to do a job for Forest. They certainly don’t have tne man-management skills to get the best out of the modern professional footballer.
@Fergal O’ Reilly: yes because they got to the last 16 of the euros and 90 mins from a World Cup without having a clue about tactics. Sick of people churning out this shpeel about o Neil and Keane.
@Lorcan Cunningham: there was a horrible amount of luck and just plain heart and fight by the players to get there though. When the adrenaline of the Euros died, then the will of the players did too. There’s nothing motivating about playing the same aimless football for the following two years when smaller countries with less talent become more proficient and confident.
@Lorcan Cunningham: Nah! You’ve cherrypicked one example of things working out – and there’s probably one or two other properly “impressive” displays e.g. Germany and Serbia. (But even then what exactly was their tactical master stroke? ) And anyway, the last 12-18 months have been abject – deplorable even – with ZERO semblance of a tactical game plan . And on top of that, you need to be even better man-managers in a club environment because of player/agent-power. The two lads are beyond abysmal in that department.
@Fergal O’ Reilly: last 12 months things crumbled due to injuries/retirements. The lads were at the helm for some memorable nights for Irish football over their tenure, nights that had been lacking for a decade. Get off the o Neill’s a dinosaur bandwagon lads it’s embarrassing.
@Fergal O’ Reilly: I don’t think anybody could disagree with you . O’Neill would be absolute disaster for Forest. In fact I think he would be a disaster for any team. If you want to watch dross week in week out, get Big Sam. At least you would have some chance of promotion
In the context of management, to mention Brian Clough and Martin O’Neill in the same sentence is sacrilegious. Brian Clough was one of the greatest football managers who ever lived. Martin O’Neill was at best a journeyman manager.
@Fergal O’ Reilly: The Big Sam thing was a joke by the way. You should also pray the don’t get Big Sam.
@Lorcan Cunningham: I’m not on the “dinosaur bandwagon” apropos of nothing (like I’d never bring it up for the sake of getting a dig in – that’d be puerile, and indeed embarrassing) …I only make the case for his lack of tactical nous in making the case against his being considered for the role
@CrabaRev: Ha! I get you! To be honest, we’ve almost been relegated for the past few seasons, been banned from the transfer market for FPA transgressions, had parts of the stadium closed off etc. I just think that being 4 points off a promotion spot in mid January isn’t a bad place to be, and this manager should have been given more time and resources.
@Lorcan Cunningham: Not as embarrassing as O’Neill himself. From his amazing lack of on-field tactics, to his total lack of regimented training sessions (no practicing of set piece defending?!) to his contemptuous attitude to the Irish media and Tony O’Donoghue in particular.
The man belongs in the dustbin of history, and should be let nowhere near any professional setup.
Let’s see what they can do when they can actually buy in players unlike international football. The ‘we haven’t got the footballers’ excuse would work here
He wasn’t fired!
“RUNNN FORREST RUNNN”
I’d like to see Keane work as a No. 2 for a manager who plays attacking football such as Brendan Rodgers or Roberto Martinez.
1. Karanka was not fired – he resigned, as per the club website.
2. In what parallel universe would either O’Neill or Keane be a good fit for Forest? A generation of Forest fans were brought up on free flowing passing football as practiced by Brian Clough. The younger ones want this to remain as the club ethos – we do not want to watch ‘$hit on a stick’ football with no real tactics as played by O’Neill sides. Clough once famously said “if god had wanted football to be played in the clouds, he’d have put grass up there”. O’Neill has never heeded his mentor’s coaching philosophy as a manager, somewhat ironic given that O’Neill was a cultured playmaker himself.
No, two coaches we definitely do not want to see employed at the City Ground are Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane.
@Colm O’Sullivan: I hope it’s neither of those two. I’ve a feeling it could be Jokanovic
Always liked O’Neill as a manager, gave Leicester a great belief when they were down and out! I don’t think he will be considered though…feel Marinakis will look for someone like Mark Hughes or David Moyes
That is ironic; good last line.
Daryl Murphy will end up there if Roy Keane goes there, Roy Keane and Daryl Murphy go together just as well as Harry Redknapp and Nico Kranjcar
@Eddie Dillon.: Daryl Murphy is already there.
@Eddie Dillon.: Ah jaysus Eddie