At the end of it all, there was an excruciating and rather melancholic scene in which Ange Postecoglou headed out across the pitch to shake the hands of his players and found them wandering off in other directions, leaving him to stand alone and applaud the visiting contingent of fans.
Ryan Yates, a player who is class right down to his bootstraps, was one of the few to seek him out. And another crumb of consolation to be taken today is the Forest fans’ decision not to join the Newcastle faithful’s robust rendition of ‘sacked in the morning,’ which they had sung on Thursday night when the return of European football to the City Ground brought defeat by Midtjylland.
In the chill of the late afternoon, when Nick Woltemade thrashed home his penalty, you wondered where on earth all of this was going for the manager who stared implacably across the pitch, rubbed his face vigorously and then started to offer instructions by pointing, in no particular direction.
Of the players re-setting in front of him, only Neco Williams demonstrated any obvious willingness to maintain the fight and encourage others also to do so.
This is where the story often ends in the Premier League pantomime as we have come to know it. Forest will decide during the international break whether to stick with the man appointed 27 days ago or sack him, on the basis of a winless first seven games.
But it was impossible to hear Postecoglou’s reflections on such a prospect without fervently wishing that he is not ushered to the door.
Ange Postecoglou reacts on the sideline as Nottingham Forest slipped to defeat at Newcastle
Forest are without a win in any of Postecoglou’s seven games since he took charge last month
Instead of the interminable buttoned-up talk which makes these occasions so homogenous and predictable, we witnessed again the candour of an individual who adds so much to the light and shade of the Premier League.
To the question of whether he could ‘turn the situation around?’ he simply laughed – ‘Yes! It’s a lost cause!’ – before applying a rationale it is surely hard to disagree with.
‘Seriously – what’s wrong with something being hard? Why do we just want something easily packaged?
‘You think I would be sitting here at the age of 60 if I lacked self-belief or lacked fight.’
As he spoke, you realised why some Forest staff were so impressed by his words to journalists on Friday, as the sacking rumours were circulating. In the words of one, they felt ready to ‘run through walls’ for him.
There seem to have been comically challenging moments everywhere Postecoglou has turned during his few short weeks in charge.
After the 1-1 draw at Burnley – where Forest deserved the points – the biblical rain caused electrical problems for satellite TV crews which meant his broadcast interview was delayed. He instead headed off for his press conference in the deluge, only to find the TV commentary of the Manchester United/Chelsea game drowning him out.
No one could find the off button. He carried on with poise and good humour.
Postecoglou greets Morgan Gibbs-White, but cut an isolated figure at the final whistle
Class and grace are not reason enough to be kept on. The substantial footballing objection to Postecoglou’s appointment, of course, is that he is attempting to revolutionise the entire counter-attacking ethos of Forest’s style under Nuno Espirito Santo, despite that method taking Forest to Europe.
He is turning them into a passing side on the hoof, with an average 479 successful passes per game for his Forest teams before this match, compared with an average 284 under Nuno. The pay-off for the self-expression has been a new defensive vulnerability.
That weakness was painfully evident when Newcastle began turning the screw on Forest after Jacob Murphy had arrived as a right-sided deliverer in place of the fast but ineffective Anthony Elanga.
In a rearguard where Nuno once created order, there was chaos as Woltemade fired a shot against the underside of the bar and Matz Sels saved from substitutes Malick Thiaw and Harvey Barnes.
And then there was Kieran Trippier’s diagonal to Sandro Tonali, whose lofted shot Sels lifted over the bar: gorgeous football, on a different cognitive plain to anything from Forest. Chris Wood’s heavy touch when Morgan Gibbs-White laid on the team’s only golden chance screamed out the lack of assurance infecting Nuno’s once confident band of brothers .
That penalty Forest conceded reflected the muddled minds, too. A pass in search of Eliot Anderson – their outstanding player – was delivered to the edge of Forest’s own box, where Bruno Guimaraes lurked. Anderson fouled him while trying to fend him off.
Postecoglou employed a back five for just the second time in the Premier League on Sunday
Nick Woltemade scored from the penalty spot to confirm the three points for Newcastle
Amid the struggles, though, there was evidence of tactical pragmatism in Postecoglou that we very rarely witnessed in his Tottenham days.
For just the second time as a Premier League manager, and the first time at Forest, he employed a back five rather than a four. Were the impervious Murillo, struggling for fitness, in that line, it might have worked.
There is not flat terrain up ahead for Postecoglou, whose side meet Chelsea, Porto and Bournemouth after the international break, and we all know which way this one is probably going to go.
But here is variety, difference – and a manager also willing to work within Evangelos Marinakis’ modern football structure which Nuno rather classlessly rejected.
‘I could be sitting on the couch today but I’d rather be here,’ Postecoglou reflected. ‘I’m not a worries-me kind of guy. If people think I’m somehow not enjoying what I’m doing, they’ve got no idea what I’m like.’
The look in his eye told you that this just might be interesting.
