Nottingham Forest are in advanced talks to appoint Sean Dyche as their manager. Dyche is the main contender to become the next Forest head coach, following the sacking of Ange Postecoglou, and the Premier League club hope to conclude a deal on Monday. Postecoglou was sacked 17 minutes after Forest's 3-0 defeat by Chelsea in the Premier League on Saturday.

Forest are 18th in the table after just one win in eight league games, during what has been a season of upheaval. Dyche has had positive talks over the past 24 hours and sources close to the appointment have told BBC Sport his chances of getting the job have improved significantly over the weekend. Roberto Mancini has also held discussions with Forest officials, while Fulham manager Marco Silva is admired but under contract. There is also a large release clause in Silva's contract that has emerged as a factor, given Forest have already spent on sacking Postecoglou and Nuno Espirito Santo this season.

Whether Silva would be prepared to leave Fulham mid-season is also understood to be an issue. Sources are indicating that Dyche is currently the standalone candidate, given the difficulties in appointing Silva, while the initial interest in Mancini is understood to have cooled. Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis sacked Nuno just three matches into the campaign and replaced him with Postecoglou. The Australian failed to win a game and his dismissal - 39 days after his appointment on 9 September - meant his stint at Forest is the shortest permanent managerial reign in Premier League history.

Dyche was on the books of Forest as a youth team player in the late 1980s while Brian Clough was manager, but never made a first-team appearance. He has not had a managerial job since being sacked by Everton in January after just under two years in charge of the Toffees. Dyche won 21, lost 31 and drew 23 of his 75 Premier League matches as Everton boss, guiding the club to 17th and 15th-place finishes. Prior to that Dyche spent nearly a decade as Burnley manager between October 2012 and April 2022, twice winning promotion to the top flight and helping the Clarets qualify for Europe for the first time since 1967. He also had a stint in charge of Watford for the 2011–2012 season, only to lose his job following a change of ownership.

Kettering-born Dyche spent his entire playing career as a defender outside of the top flight, making more than 500 appearances for clubs including Chesterfield, Bristol City, Millwall, Watford and Northampton. Unlike Ange Postecoglou's appointment, Sean Dyche's arrival at Nottingham Forest makes sense as his style of play has historically been more tactically in tune with the brand of football Nuno Espirito Santo employed to bring European football back to the City Ground. With no pre-season for Postecoglou to impose his unique footballing ideologies, and with a slew of games coming thick and fast at the start of his tenure, the Australian struggled to stamp his authority on a squad so used to playing a certain way.

The appointment of another pragmatic coach, similar to Nuno, should on paper steady the ship and suit Forest's players, who were defensively sound and proved to be devastating on the counter-attack in 2024-25. As the graphic below shows, both Nuno and Dyche teams are very happy to cede possession and allow the opposition the ball, before attacking at speed when they get it back. All of which contrasts hugely with how Postecoglou got his players to operate at Tottenham. PPDA is passes allowed per defensive action. It measures how often teams wait until interrupting a spell of opposition possession - whether that's winning the ball back or getting a foot in to concede a throw-in or corner. Teams aggressively trying to win the ball back will have a lower figure - teams prepared to soak up pressure will have a higher figure. Direct speed is how quickly the ball moves towards the opponents' goal during a sequence of possession, measured in metres per second.