Nottingham Forest manager Oliver Glasner was fuming after his players delivered another below-par showing as their poor start to the season continued.
Glasner’s side were beaten 2-0 by Brentford and they are second-bottom in the Premier League. They have won just once across ten games in all competitions and even at this early juncture there are signs of tension between the Austrian, appointed only last summer, and the Forest fans.
“Just talking about the result today, it’s disappointing and frustrating, and we have to accept it’s not good enough. If we lose four of the last five games, it’s not good enough,” Glasner said.
“And that’s why, for me, it’s now time that we change things, that I change things. That’s what I will do.”
He then added: “Nobody needs to have pity with Oliver Glasner. If I want, I could start in two weeks somewhere else. I won’t do it. But the players, the staff, they remain in the same situation – and it’s the same **** situation the club had last year.
“So you need to change and rebuild from the bottom to the top. This is clear for me, and this is what I will do, without any compromises. Zero. Zero. And if these things don’t work, they will let me know. I didn’t come to Nottingham because I was bored at home. No, I came to Nottingham to succeed. I came to Nottingham to get the visions of the owner and the fans and the club to reality. And therefore we need to have a bigger change than maybe I thought, to be honest.”
It was a fairly even first quarter of the game and Forest arguably should have gone in front. James McAtee came mightily close with a bending effort that just cleared Caoimhin Kelleher’s right-hand post.
The visitors were made to pay for that miss not long after when Brentford opened the scoring. Kelleher played his part, with a beautiful pick-out to Dango Ouattara wide on the right. He then jinked past Murilo and saw his pass across the area diverted into his own goal by Nikola Milenkovic, as the ball looped up and over his goalkeeper Matz Sels.
It almost got worse before half-time for Forest as Mathias Jensen saw a free-kick come back off the crossbar, much to Sels’ relief.
Forest then squandered a golden chance to restore parity when Ryan Yates inexplicably headed over from a few yards out after good work from Morgan Gibbs-White to pick him out. And as is so often the case when a team is struggling near the bottom they were punished. Brentford scored a second on 76 minutes when Igor Thiago finished after Jaidon Anthony picked him out from the right.
The result saw Brentford move up to sixth in the standings.
Bees’ chief Keith Andrews said: “We have had some good wins this season and that is right up there. The way the opposition set up, they were difficult to break down, we had to stay patient, not get frustrated and we had to nullify their key players. Off the back of a very busy week, another one for us with the scheduling, it was a really nice win.”
