Postecoglou wants to make Carabao Cup statement
Ange Postecoglou said Nottingham Forest’s Carabao Cup third-round tie against Swansea City is a good opportunity to give minutes to members of the squad who have not played as much.
Forest has at least eight extra matches to come this season in the Europa League alongside the Carabao Cup, Emirates FA Cup and Premier League campaigns, in what is set to be the club’s busiest fixture list for a number of years.
Thirteen new signings arrived at the City Ground during the summer transfer window, two of whom made their Forest debuts on Saturday evening against Arsenal – Nicolo Savona and Dilane Bakwa – who both arrived in the final days of the window.
With Forest’s Europa League campaign beginning next week against Real Betis, Postecoglou told his pre-match press conference that he wants to use the Carabao Cup match to get the squad up to speed and ready to be called upon during the season.
He also confirmed Murillo is unlikely to be fit for the match after being substituted in the first half against Arsenal.
“There’s a lot of new players and they haven’t really had a chance to get out there," he said. "Some of them haven’t played at all yet.
"Tomorrow is the perfect opportunity to get them out there and playing, give them a feeling of what it’s like to play for the club and get some match fitness into them.
“This will be our programme up until Christmas and we’re going to need all the players and the last thing you want is to throw players in when they haven’t played for over a month.
"For the squad and as individuals it’s a great opportunity to get out there and play some football.”
Postecoglo has enjoyed more time on the training pitch with the players this week ahead of the match, having had only one session with the entire group before his first game in charge.
“They’re all important, but in the context of the club’s ambitions and in terms of where we are in the season; with me coming in it’s a great opportunity for us tomorrow night to implement some of the things we want to over the next period," he said.
“We’ve had two training sessions with the group which have been really good. I mentioned after the game on Saturday that it was a very unusual week for the players – they were flying in from all over the world and we only had one session together so everything was a bit rushed.
“The last two days have been good in trying to get the players understanding the routines we’ll have going into games in terms of training sessions, meetings and the preparation we’ll be doing.”
Despite the volume of matches to come, Postecoglou insists the Carabao Cup presents as good an opportunity as any to win silverware.
“I think every opportunity you have to win a trophy you shouldn’t let go because it’s hard to win things in football, especially when you’re at a club that has had success in the past and the supporters want more of it.
“This cup gives us an opportunity to progress, and we want to give ourselves the opportunity to hopefully win some silverware.
“We know that with Europe this year and the sheer number of games we’re going to be playing, we’re going to need the whole squad.
“The players want to play as well; they’ve arrived either late in the window or they haven’t had an opportunity to play yet. They need to play – they’re good players.
“We want to start embedding how we want to play our football and tomorrow is a great opportunity to do that.
“We want to show what we can do and there’ll be structure, and we want to play our football, but we’ll have to be disciplined – Swansea are a good side and cup competitions always provide difficult games.”
