CITY GROUND NOTEBOOK: Home comforts for Sean Dyche and his staff they returned to familiar territory

Sean Dyche has quickly returned to life as a Premier League manager and couldn’t have wished for more familiar territory than the City Ground.

Dyche and his assistants Steve Stone and Ian Woan were on the books at Forest, although Dyche never featured in the first team, while Dyche has a home in Nottingham and was a regular at Forest’s home games between leaving Burnley and joining Everton. .

There’s no question of divided loyalties here though, especially as Woan is a lifelong Everton fan and was part of the club’s youth organization as a player.

You wondered what Kevin Campbell would have brought to the party in its heyday as both sides battled for firepower.

The striker had successful spells with both clubs, scoring nine goals in eight games on loan to keep Everton in the Premier League in 1998-99, having helped Forest to promotion a year earlier.

However, the former Arsenal striker was a diplomat before him. “I just want all my previous clubs to do well,” he said.

FOREST FORT BY THE TRENT

Nottingham Forest are unbeaten in their last nine Premier League home games (won four, drawn five), with only Manchester United (11) on a longer run.

It is Forest’s best run at the City Ground in the top flight since a run of 20 matches between February 1995 and January 1996.

The wealth of the Premier League has led some to label it ‘the real Super League’. While that might be the case on the balance sheet, that’s not the case on the field.

The football played at the top of the division is as good as anywhere in the world, however there is plenty of reliable old scum in the bottom half, and much of it showed itself here. When those behind the Super League came up with their plan, this was not what they had in mind.

Everton have already collected three fines for fighting during the season, but are apparently in no mood to change their spirited approach. The Blues took a physical approach from the start and there were several flashpoints in the second half, notably between Morgan Gibbs-White and Dwight McNeil, then Jack Colback and Abdoulaye Doucoure.

All hail Cooper’s smart sidekick

He slipped through the tunnel unnoticed by most fans after briefly watching the warm-up but, along with manager Steve Cooper, Filippo Giraldi is the key figure at Nottingham Forest in 2023.

The Italian joined as sporting director last October and will have discovered that establishing a clear transfer policy at the City Ground is a bit like herding cats.

Fortunately for Forest, Giraldi is a savvy operator with an impressive contact book. Having worked for the Pozzo family in Watford, he too is used to working in a rapidly changing environment.