Championship outfit Nottingham Forest look set to sell Costel Pantilimon as Sabri Lamouchi looks to transform the club’s style of play.
Nottingham Forest never expected a football revolution when they appointed Martin O’Neill as their new manager back in January.
They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks and O’Neill, at 67 and with 30 years of managerial experience under his belt, was always unlikely to adopt tiki taka and ‘Total Voetbal’ well into pension age.
So it will take some time for O’Neill’s successor Sabri Lamouchi, 20 years his senior, to transform Nottingham Forest from pragmatists into purists and put his stamp on this hybrid team. Though this isn’t for a lack of trying.
The former France international has focused heavily on ball retention and high-pressing in pre-season but the ability to play out from the back is also a key part of Lamouchi’s plan.
Speaking to the Nottingham Post recently, club captain Michael Dawson admitted that he and the other centre-halves at the City Ground were being coached to start attacks from deep and take risks in possession rather than lumping it onto the concrete bonce of Daryl Murphy, a la O’Neill.
But it’s not just the defenders who will have to adapt to a whole new style. It’s the goalkeepers too.
Pantili-gone
Hence why Aro Muric, the Ederson-lite ball-playing shot-stopper who Pep Guardiola loves, was signed on loan from Manchester City. The 20-year-old will be joined at the City Ground by Caen’s Brice Samba (Le10 Sport) in a move likely to force Costel Pantilimon out the door.
The giant Romanian was conspicuous by his absence in the opening day defeat to West Brom and a quick glance at the stats perhaps explains why he has no role to play in the Lamouchi era. Pantilimon has never been renowned for his distribution, completing just 42 per cent of his passes last season.
According to the Post, Pantilimon is a target for Olympiakos and it seems very unlikely that he will be a Forest player by the time September begins.
Flash back to 2016. Pep Guardiola, confident and cardiganned, strolled into Manchester and booted Joe Hart, a fans’ favourite and long-term number one, out of the door. Quite simply, the popular Englishman didn’t fit into his desired specifications.
Parralles can certainly be drawn with Forest’s new manager and a Romanian custodian. It remains to be seen if Lamouchi’s transformation is quite as succesful as Guardiola’s however.
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