I tried to send you a PM but the site wouldn't let me. Could you try to PM me? Apologies to the rest of the folks that want to read about Horvath still not doing well. He's still not doing well.
To nobody's surprise, Forest have appointed former Swansea coach Steve Cooper as their new "permanent" manager. His record is quite impressive, having taken Swansea to the playoffs and the the playoff final in successive seasons, so no excuses for Ethan not getting starts please. If he doesn't, he's just not good enough to be a regular 1st choice. BTW I put permanent in quotation marks because the new guy is Forest's 22nd coach (permanent or temporary) in the last 10 years. The new owner is definitely an improvement of his whacko predecessor, but he's Greek and owns perennial champions Olympiacos so he'll still be pretty trigger-happy
Evangelos Marinakis? The guy who's been involved in match fixing many times and finally had to step down from Olympiakos when taken to trial over it? The guy who's friends with virtually all the key people in the Golden Dawn neo-Nazi mafia? Really? Well, I guess by comparison he's not as bad as others.
I don't follow Greek football - or many other things Greek TBH - so I wasn't aware of Marinakis' legal troubles. So, if he's as bad as it seems, that still leaves him only "about as bad as" the previous owner. If Marinakis is a distinctly shady character, the previous guy was whacko in a seriously bipolar disorder kind of way. Yes, he was that bad
On the bench: 📋 Team news👊 Steve Cooper names his Forest side 🆚 Millwall🌳🔴 #NFFC pic.twitter.com/2hZiGern3z— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) September 25, 2021
How does 1 expect any keeper to perform well if they've gone like 2 months without a game prior to being subbed in?
Of course, that is exactly what one has to expect of a back-up keeper. It's kind of the job description. And, if you want to be #1 and right now you're #2, you need to play like #1 when selected. It ain't easy but you don't get paid pro money for something any Joe could do.
Once again FotMob has Samba as the worst player on the pitch for both teams with a 5.6. He's determined to play himself out of the team and hopefully Horvath got his slip/fall/mistake out of the way and will be ready to seize the job when given another chance because they cannot keep playing Samba and watching him give up weak goals, costing them points.
Forest are stuck with a "cleanest dirty shirt" situation until Xmas, so he doesn't even have to paly like a #1: he just has to be better than worse. If Ethan hadn't brain farted against Middlesboro he'd have started against Huddersfield (which they won, even with Samba in goal) and again yesterday. Just by being "meh", Ethan becomes better than Samba, who is then relegated to picking the splinters out of his ass. That Samba continues to start means that Ethan isn't looking much or even any better than Samba in training, which is the bare minimum he needs to do to be a #1. Maybe his problem is that he's got all the physical and technical tools to be a top goalkeeper, but the mindset to succeed at top level isn't there. In short, he's one of life's #2s and always will be if he plays in a serious league, which includes MLS by the way.
FWIW the local newspaper didn't say he was particularly bad and their match report didn't say anything about him, positive or negative, in relation to the Millwall goal. In fact they didn't mention him at all. Brice SAMBA: Made very few saves as the defence stood firm, but he lacked accuracy with his kicking and it meant Forest struggled to build from the back. 5/10 OTOH they did give him the lowest rating of any Forest player.
If the new boss wants to play out of the back and Samba is a bad passer that could also open the door for Ethan.
As long as the new coach missed Ethan's last outting... I mean, of all the things Samba could be considered bad at that would help Horvath, footskills is the worst.
Told ya. Samba is going to crash. Hopefully it will happen early enough so that they don't need a full reboot. Ethan needs to wait for his shot running in the background as a daemon.
On the bench: 📋 Team news 🔢 How The Reds line-up for tonight's clash in South Yorkshire 👊 🌳🔴 #NFFC pic.twitter.com/kc2FTscnfR— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) September 29, 2021