Leeds United put Nottingham Forest to the sword on Friday night, and it could lead to Sean Dyche answering with his position at the club soon.
United’s relegation scrap looks set to remain an incredibly tight race in the final months of the window. A huge meeting at home to Nottingham Forest yielded all three points for Leeds against a direct rival.
From minute one up until Lorenzo Lucca’s goal, Leeds were comfortably the better side overall. The three goals we scored were proof, cutting the away side open three times to deservedly take maximum points.
Sean Dyche, though, sounded incredibly bitter at full time. He lamented his defence rather than the quality of Ilia Gruev’s ball to Jayden Bogle, suggesting that Leeds weren’t knocking on the door despite hitting the crossbar two minutes before scoring.
“We knew they would start fast, we warned the players about that, how they’ve gone about their business here,” he said, per the YEP. “We did suggest they would do that. The frustrating thing for me, we were having our best spell and it’s such a poor goal. We were asking questions of them, Igor [Jesus] has a good chance, we’re asking a lot more questions and concede such a poor goal. Straight ball over the top, we’re trying to play offside, and distances are wrong, covering positions are wrong, and that’s very frustrating for me as manager.”
Dyche then suggested his side responded well to Leeds’ opener. Even though, we scored four minutes later through Noah Okafor.
“[The response was alright] it was just the second goal,” he continued. “You can’t concede another poor goal. The game was pretty, pretty even at 1-0 down. They didn’t find that edge that they did so early in the game. Two nil down at half-time is not easy in the Premier League. And the third is the one that really kills you, because by then you’re looking at it going, okay the biggest challenge is to nick the next goal but you go 2-1 down and all of a sudden everything changes. But we didn’t do that. We gave away another really, really poor goal defensively.”
Sean Dyche facing sudden sack pressure at Nottingham Forest after Leeds United defeat
The shelf life of a Nottingham Forest manager appears one of the shortest in the division under trigger-happy owner Evangelos Marinakis.
Already on his third of the season after ditching Nuno Espirito Santo and then Ange Postecoglou, the pressure is mounting on Dyche now.
It leaves Dyche now looking to a midweek trip to Molineux against 20th-placed Wolves to turn his fortunes around. Anything but three points against the side sitting bottom will raise further questions over his position at the City Ground.
Are Nottingham Forest staring at drop into Premier League relegation zone?
A three-point gap to the bottom three is sure to have Forest fans looking over their shoulders, if they weren’t already.
Their performance against Leeds, despite the amount of quality they had on the pitch, is so alarming for them.
If they can’t establish any dominance against a Leeds side missing a couple of vital players, then you have to worry for them.
That’s not to say we don’t keep looking over our shoulders too. But, having confidently played Forest off the park, we should have optimism that we can build a bigger gap in the run-in.
