At no stage did the Australian coach seem to understand the assignment he had been given at Nottingham Forest
W
ell, the Chelsea fans were wrong anyway. Ange Postecoglou was not sacked in the morning. Instead he was sacked in the afternoon. So, another small win there for Ange, even in defeat. Not to mention further proof of the notion to which he has always seemed so fatally in thrall, that he is at any given moment the smartest guy in the room. Even when, as of Saturday afternoon, he’s no longer in the room at all.
The official version seems to be that Postecoglou was fired 18 minutes after his final defeat at the City Ground. In reality he was fired in real time, a live-action televised touchline sacking, gone from the moment Evangelos Marinakis disappeared from his seat midway through the second half with the look of a gamekeeper required now to the wring the neck of a dying pheasant.
Watching Postecoglou delay the moment after the final whistle, out there looking hollow-eyed in front of the near-empty stands, it felt entirely apt that the final image of a manager who projected himself always as a wised-up straight shooter should instead be a moment of touching naivety.
