Ange Postecoglou is under no illusions. He knows he has been brought into Nottingham Forest to win matches and trophies.
The confident and bullish head coach even joked about potentially having to win silverware in his first year, despite his self-made trope while in charge of Tottenham Hotspur about “always winning a trophy in the second season”.
It was, as the best comedy is, a quip based on truth.
Every time Postecoglou talked about the club’s owner Evangelos Marinakis during his first press conference at the City Ground he mentioned the same word: “ambitious”.
The insistence on being able to “compete with the best and challenge for trophies” were the words the owner used to explain why he has selected Postecoglou as his new person in charge.
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The best of Ange Postecoglou’s first press conference as Nottingham Forest head coach
It is a challenge the affable Aussie is clearly up for.
He has won trophies everywhere he has gone, something he insists he is not given enough credit for, as many of his years in management were spent competing on different continents.
The desire to win and love of the game has motivated Postecoglou from being a football-obsessed kid in Melbourne to achieving Europa League glory on a special night with Spurs in Bilbao.
Now he has the extra drive of proving doubters wrong after so many criticised his style and abilities at Spurs.
It was the first time Postecoglou had been sacked during his long coaching career. He intends it to be the last.
The Nottingham Forest players that took part in his first training session on Wednesday were quick to admit they enjoyed the intensity, demands and detail coming from their new boss.
Some on the red side of Nottingham are worried about how Forest will adapt from a counter-attacking team to one that, in Postecoglou’s words, “plays exciting football”.
The Athens-born manager says he has played “every formation possible” during his two-decades-long coaching career. His first three days have seen him put in longer hours than expected at the club’s training ground to cook up schemes for his new players.
Postecoglou was all smiles during his first training session with the squad on Wednesday
It is a squad brimming with attacking talent. Around £165m was invested in the front line alone this summer, not to mention the already in-house talent of Callum Hudson-Odoi, Morgan Gibbs-White and Chris Wood.
If attacking football is coming to the City Ground, he has a lot of players to channel his wishes on the pitch.
It is clear having another shot in the Premier League and Europe has got Postecoglou smiling again.
As has the end of five weeks of “family time and the school run”. Even if the call from his new club came at the expense of his “hangover-style” 60th birthday party, which saw him take calls from his new boss instead of celebrating with friends.
Postecoglou will not care if his team is lifting a trophy by the end of the season. He can start planning The Hangover: Part 2 if he brings silverware to Trentside.
