MATT BARLOW: Nuno should win PL MOTY only if he can stop Forest fizzling out

Nuno Espirito Santo should win the Premier League's Manager of the Year Award if he can complete the jump from 17 to the top five of a year and take Nottingham Forest back to the European elite.

You could make a very good thing for Arne Slot in his debut season in Liverpool or for Eddie Howe, which ended Newcastle's long waiting time for a trophy and ended up on the right track for a return of Champions League.

Maybe for Unai Emery or Oliver Glasner if they put an end to further progress with a FA Cup victory. However, Nuno also goes into that conversation of the semi -final of this weekend.

There is so much to admire in the BOSTSTANCOUSE. The beautiful balance for the team with defensive rocks and electric pace. The visceral energy of the city, released from years of suffering.

A year ago they fought the relegation and feared points deduction. Now an era of lush too high spending is announced as a model for promoted clubs. Strange indeed.

Then there has been Nuno's redeeming arch since Tottenham has fired him in 17 games after four months and eight victories. As much as results, it was his sober football and tacit persona that Nuno made so badly suited for a club that loves his Swagger.

This all seems relevant when the clubs collide on Monday evening. One enjoys the most successful season in decades and the other caught in another existential crisis. What do they really want? Good luck, they will tell you. Don't we all share? And what is success?

For Forest it has been to tackle elite opponents without fear and to rattle some of the best teams in the country and what makes it a matter of whether the damage to the counterattack is caused by 30 percent.

To compete to qualify for the Champions League, a trophy that they won twice under his shape such as the European Cup, or to cancel the FA Cup for the first time since 1959, are measures of success fans who did not dare to consider in August.

Spurs approaches the debate from another perspective and has spent one after one after one of the last 75 years in the top flight. They have not searched in exile, nor baptized in the third level like Bos.

Call it aristocratic arrogance if you want. Or the right of the rich. As one of the richest clubs in the world, they expect to challenge the big prizes, although they have won only three in 40 years. And they want to do it with Flair, because that's how it was. Occasionally romance makes way for urgent materialism, principles suspended to tolerate the appointment of George Graham or Jose Mourinho.

Graham brought in the League Cup. Juande Ramos did that too. Mourinho reached a final of the League Cup to be fired less than a week before the game.

None of them was really embraced. Graham, who was in charge when I first reported about the club, could never compensate for his Arsenal foundation. He had led Spurs to a FA Cup semi-final against their rivals in North London when he became the first looting of Daniel Levy.

Glenn Hoddle came in and lost the semi of Arsenal and started the spiral of madness. Appointment and shooting. Managers convicted differently as too tactically or not tactically enough. Too remote and detached or too involved and emotional.

None of them can get something on something that they can pass on as success. Not even five exceptional years under Mauricio Pochettino fed by the goals of Harry Kane. And now Ange Postecoglou is fighting for his work.

Those glorious weeks in the autumn 2023 were unraveled in what could end as the worst season of Tottenham of the Premier League era. Those who sang the name of Postecoglou have lost confidence and want him the most, although they suspect that the root of the problem lies elsewhere.

And yet everything in the world of fine lines can still turn upside down for these two coaches before the season ends. Forest is blurred, flooded by the chase package. The Dream of the Champions League hangs on the balance, and they can really do with beating traces that, despite all their problems, get close to getting the Europa League in the hands of the Europa League.

Bodo/Glimt, Athletic Bilbao and Manchester United will have other ideas, but what a blunt reversal of fortune it would not be if Forest would not expand much and spurs end with a large trophy and a place in the Champions League of next season after such a smelly campaign.

Nobody will vote for Postecoglou as manager of the year. There is not even a guarantee that winning the Europa League would save him the pocket.

Five things we learned this week

1. Tony Bloom and Matthew Benham show no sign of ending their personal feud. Bloom mixed with Brighton fans in a nearby pub and looked from the end of the end on Saturday. He always runs the Brentford Boardroom, even though he remains hidden in his private box. However, Bloom must have closed in Krimpen when fans around him pointed a choir on: 'You don't know what you are doing' on his head coach Fabian Hurzeler.

2. Premier League clubs beat for 19-year-old Tyler Dibbling, lured by his youthful promise despite the appreciation of Southampton of £ 100 million, but I can't help people with money to spend a big deal to an attacker for the consistent brilliant and proven talent of Jarred Bowen of Jarred Bowen.

3. Nine goals were scored in extra time on Thursday in three European ties. Five in Manchester United, two in Lazio and two in Rapid Vienna. A timely memory of the value of another 30 minutes of actually football and the sensation that it can deliver, despite what a campaign-led campaign seems to be to send signed cups directly to punishments for extra TV drama.

4. Michael Cheek van Bromley scored his 22nd goal of the League Two season on Good Friday. At the age of 33 he is the top scorer in the EFL in his first season in the competition. Cheek worked part -time in a coffee shop when going on the target path with Stanway Rovers and marks Tey in the Essex Senior League. He has 127 goals in six years at Bromley.

5. Antonio Conte is on his old tricks, I see it. With his former club Inter Milan, his Napoli team is dancing for the Serie A title, because he threatens threats that he can leave if he is not supported in the transfer market. “I'm not stupid, I don't see the means to do this,” said Conte. Some things will never change to paraphrase his farewell shot at Tottenham.

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