"All the best TV series, season three is better than season two.”
That was one of the final things Ange Postecoglou said publicly as manager of Tottenham. He had just done what he always does, won a trophy in his second season of coaching a club. We never got the third, he was sacked a short time later.
What’s your favourite TV show? Breaking Bad? The Wire? Married At First Sight? Succession?
When you really get hooked on a drama, it impacts you in ways you didn’t expect. You start shedding tears for a fictional character who is killed off. You’re unreasonably pleased when two romantic protagonists find happiness. And when the show finally wraps, there is an odd gap in your life where the show once sat.
At the commencement of the 2025/26 season there was an Angeball shaped hole in the football ecosystem.
Who was going to deliver zingers at English journalists while punctuating sentences with ‘mate’? Who would prove the doubters wrong?
What a gift it was when it emerged the Australian had signed on for Nottingham Forest.
When you’re dealing with teams at this level, there’s always a wrinkle with ownership. I was intrigued to see what we might find with this club.
Would they have the backing of a sportswashing nation state with deep pockets, like Newcastle and Manchester City? Perhaps a cold blooded investment organisation like Fenway Sports Group, which runs Liverpool. Manchester United has a kind of mega-mix of dysfunctional wealth; the fan-loathed Glazer family and Sir Jim Ratcliffe are combining to help supporters plumb new depths of despair.
Whoever is in charge will impact what we see from Postecoglou on and off the pitch. This is not a person who toes the company line for the sake of it, ask Football Australia.
The Nottingham setup has… idiosyncrasies. The owner is Evangelos Marinakis, who Forbes estimates to be worth $5bn USD. Two years younger than Postecoglou, he made his fortune in Greek shipping, before diversifying into media and sport. He also owns Olympiakos, a massive Greek football club.
Marinakis also has a long list of football and non-football related “allegations”. Perhaps the most colourful being the suggestion he was involved in the firebombing of a Greek referees’ bakery.
Marinakis has denied any wrongdoing, even fronting the BBC to profess his innocence.
What is not in dispute is the ruthless manner with which he dispatched the bloke Postecoglou replaced. Nuno Espirito Santos had just delivered the club a historic seventh-place finish in the Premier League, but lasted three games into the season before his Greek boss sacked him for Ange.
Postecoglou has always won a trophy in his second season in charge of a team, when asked about that prospect at Forest, he joked it may have to come sooner.
“I may have to to have a second year here, mate.”
This season has the ingredients for drama. Angeball is loading.
