It was hardly a bouncer off his long run, but Arne Slot did find a bit of spin. His comments came on Tuesday night, after one of the most breathless halves of the season, when Liverpool left Nottingham Forest with a point and Slot floated a suggestion that one side fancied a draw more than the other.
Among some healthy praise for the team he faced, this is what he said: ‘There was also a lot of moments where it took a while before the play restarted.’
When he was asked to elaborate, Liverpool’s manager indulged: ‘You want as much playing time as you can, but a team that’s happy with the current result wants less playing time as they possibly can.’
Nothing excessively moany there, but he was searching for a little turn off the wicket. A gentle nudge at perceptions, perhaps.
And he would have had a few statistics in his corner, if he felt inclined to use them – 23 shots to six in Liverpool’s favour, 9-0 on corners, 71 per cent of the ball and there was a tedium about the wait for Elliot Anderson to recover from a brush with Trent Alexander-Arnold’s shoulder. In the digits, a 1-1 draw might not have looked like much of a return for Slot, after all.
But I’d hope we know Forest a bit better than that by now.
Nottingham Forest continued their stunning season with a 1-1 draw against Liverpool this week
After the game, Reds boss Arne Slot claimed that Forest were happy to settle for a draw
But, Nuno Espirito Santo’s side are playing an astonishing and explosive brand of football
The idea they were resting on what they had doesn’t stand up to a review of the tape or any other memory from this season – it doesn’t have legs. But Forest do. They absorbed kitchen sinks with their faces, hacked clearances, slapped Matz Sels’s back so much his discs must have splintered, and still Nuno Espirito Santo’s team stormed their way up the other end of the pitch. Repeatedly.
And that’s the key here – they attacked. They went in waves. At speed. Almost always on the counter and in levels of directness that contenders simply do not go for these days.
It’s all there in the footage, especially from that period between the 66th minute and 97th, when it was level. Liverpool’s chances were better, more frequent, and how magnificent it is to watch them in full flight.
But there were two in this dance, so let’s return to the idea Forest were clock-watching by reviewing what followed immediately after one of Sels’s many saves from Diogo Jota.
Curtis Jones has gathered the loose ball, edge of the Forest area, and that’s where he’s tackled by Nicolas Dominguez. It’s the trigger for this side’s forte, because nine seconds later, the game has shifted 80 yards up the field. The ball has taken a quick road to get there – one pass is drilled from Gibbs-White to Callum Hudson-Odoi and another goes the other way back to Gibbs-White, nine touches in all, three men. Suddenly Liverpool are on their heels before the move breaks down in the six-yard box.
Within minutes the same combination did it all again, 10 seconds from one area to the other, 10 touches, right-to-left-to-right. Two more minutes on and there they are once more, this time because Hudson-Odoi has intercepted an attack 18 yards from his goal line and set Anthony Elanga loose on a chase. Fewer touches this time, even quicker.
Again, there’s no finish, because that Liverpool defence is worthy of a title, but nor was there a rush to get the ball to the corner flag. It was end to end to end to end, or ‘chaos’, as Steve McManaman shouted in the excitement of his commentary. And chaos is about right. Brilliant, unconventional chaos.
Now what we didn’t see was Pep Guardiola’s football. And that’s a great kind of football indeed. A football that spawned 1,000 imitators and 100 sideways passes per game. The sort of football built on possession and patience and multi-faceted excellence, all eyes scanning for routes to a cut-back from the byline. That can sometimes morph into a football’s take on Andy Dufresne chipping away at the cell wall for years with a rock hammer.
Nuno’s team storm their way up the other end of the pitch repeatedly throughout matches
They also have a superb goalkeeper in Matz Sels who is enjoying the best season of his career
In attack, 33-year-old Chris Wood has been prolific, scoring 13 Premier League goals
But that isn’t Forest. They use dynamite.
Their football puts no onus on pressing in prescribed zones. Their way relies on choreography and precision timing, no less than Guardiola’s does, but if Nuno was writing this column it would be two paragraphs long. It might be better for it.
It is the football of Hudson-Odoi and Gibbs-White, reimagined as a pair of double-barrel shotguns, Murillo as a wall, Sels moving ever onwards from his life as fourth-choice keeper at Newcastle. It is Elliot Anderson as the all-action hero, 33-year-old Chris Wood feeding off 70-yard punts from Sels and one-touch balls from midfield. One shot, one kill. It is Nikola Milenkovic heading, blocking, tackling and little beyond his hinterland of throw-back qualities. For £12m, Forest robbed Fiorentina blind in getting him.
As a collective, they have been astonishing to watch these past few months and I’ve rarely enjoyed a game so much as I did on Tuesday.
That is about the beauty of differences. The beauty of different styles, different approaches, different ways to defend and attack. It’s why I’d hope above hope for Ange Postecoglou’s preservation at Tottenham, but his football doesn’t work like Nuno’s football.
There have been two thoughts attached to Forest’s climb this season. One is the mind-boggling nature of where they are, compared to what they are meant to be in our ecosystem. And the other is the how. How they have built a team on unfancied talents and how they play, using a directness that has no regular place of business in the top three.
I tend to loathe discussions that break football down into a statistical examination. But some are startling, such as the possession figures across the eight years since Guardiola arrived in the Premier League.
The topic of his influence has been discussed at great length elsewhere, as has the upshot that everyone wants a bit of Pep in their play now. Slot does, so too Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca, Graham Potter and the coach whose team beat my daughter’s side in the Under 11s last week.
Forest might not press teams, but at the back their work-rate and desire is relentless
They play differently to the way Pep Guardiola teams do, but that is the beauty of differences
Done right, it is sublime. And it is equally well-observed that too much of a great thing can make life a bit samey. But there is nothing samey in the recent past to the how of Nottingham Forest.
Opta provided me with a few data points this week that show only 18 teams since 2016 have gone through a season with an average of 40 per cent possession or less per game. Seven of them went down and none got higher than 10th. Allowing the other team to come at you is usually a symptom of limitations.
But then there’s Nuno’s Forest, the outlier. Not pressing, rarely going above 300 passes per game, 39 per cent possession on average. They are a difference we never realised we wanted to see.
They are making us think of possibilities that surely won’t come to fruition, of Leicester City, but at the very least Forest are plucking a twig and shoving it in the eye of tactical snobs everywhere.
I wouldn’t ever put Slot in that bracket, but what he saw as killing time would be better appreciated as a side who need an awful lot less to cause fabulous explosions.
Can Chelsea keep B-team stars happy?
There was no surprise that Chelsea slaughtered Morecambe last weekend – they have an expensive B team to handle the lesser challenges of a busy season.
It’s part of the strategy. But how sustainable is it to keep players happy if they know progress will have limited rewards?
Christopher Nkunku scored in that game, giving him 13 for the season, mostly against minnows in the Conference League, and none of those strikes have been followed by a start in the next Premier League fixture.
Enzo Maresca may struggle to keep B-team stars Joao Felix and Christopher Nkunku happy
Joao Felix is in a similar boat, with six goals in the cups, including two screamers against Morecambe, but Enzo Maresca didn’t see the merit in unleashing his confidence against Bournemouth on Tuesday.
He was on the bench again, as he has been after all his scoring appearances. For him and Nkunku, the reason is Cole Palmer. Tough one, that.
But Nkunku is open to leaving this month and Felix’s frustrations have occasionally appeared near the surface.
All well and good having a deep squad but no one wants to feed off low-hanging fruit forever.
Fury sceptics give me hope
Tyson Fury retired this week. No one in boxing believed him. There might be hope for the sport yet.
