A return is a reminder of the day when Nuno wasn’t really Nuno. Or not the Nuno Espirito Santo many thought they knew anyway. The Portuguese goes to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday with his Nottingham Forest team level on points with Arsenal. Three years ago, on his last visit there, his Tottenham side kicked off above their neighbours in the table. By the end of the North London derby, it was tempting to think there was no way back for Nuno.
His side went 3-0 down in 34 minutes. He admitted he got his gameplan wrong. A 4-3-3 formation featured Dele Alli and Tanguy Ndombele as high No 8s, leaving a hole at the heart of the midfield. A cautious strategist failed when he tried to be a cavalier. It was as though Nuno, aware of Tottenham’s traditions of attacking, tried to be something he was not. Wolves’ best manager in the last half-century had one of the shortest reigns in Spurs’ history.
Nuno goes back to Arsenal having shown he can adapt, but within the same principles. When he took the Spurs job – about seventh-choice, after a 72-day search – there were questions if he was trapped within a tactical straitjacket. His Wolves team played 3-4-3; very successfully with a 99-point promotion and twin seventh-place finishes, but it gave way to beard-stroking ennui. In his final season at Molineux, Wolves averaged under a goal a game. Factor in Nuno’s bland public pronouncements and he forged a reputation as a dullard. It scarcely helped him at Spurs.
Fast forward three years and a personal revival is based on much of his Wolves formula. Forest are the lowest scorers in the top seven, and only one team in the top 12 has fewer goals. They also have the second-best defensive record, behind only Liverpool: a former goalkeeper’s capacity to drill a defence remains an attribute. Nuno has pursued an approach that makes him an anomaly in the upper end of the standings: Forest have the third lowest share of possession this season. Wolves twice came seventh with less than 50 per cent of the ball. Nuno prefers to keep players behind the ball and then counter-attack at pace, rather than press high and control the game.
And yet the formation has distinct differences. From West Midlands to East Midlands, there have been common denominators: two powerful centre-backs, flanked by full-backs who could go forward, two central midfielders who rarely got ahead of the ball, two quick wingers and a potent target man in attack. The 10th outfielder has been his captain: but Conor Coady was the third centre-back for Wolves, Morgan Gibbs-White the No 10 at Forest. So 3-4-3 has become 4-2-3-1.
Coady was a defender with a difference, a converted midfielder who scored very lowly on defensive metrics such as headers and tackles (though had there been any for talking, he may have led the division). Gibbs-White was at Wolves at the same time and marginalised – he only made 10 starts across three Premier League seasons – which added intrigue when Nuno took over a Forest team whose best player was his former substitute.
And if that reflected Gibbs-White’s youth at the time, it also underlined the way the Wolves side was shaped around Ruben Neves and Joao Moutinho, the twin passers. Forest can have a more workmanlike feel at the base of the midfield, looking more to the No 10 for creativity. At times, due to injury or Gibbs-White’s suspension, Elliot Anderson has instead been the No 10 but Nuno has shown an adaptability he seemed to lack before, finding a way that did not involve 3-4-3.
Chris Wood’s surprise surge into Golden Boot contention suggests Nuno can still have a way with tall strikers: arguably Raul Jimenez was the best all-round No 9 in the country in the 2019-20 season. If Wolves’ fortunes nosedived after he suffered a fractured skull, the rest of the attacking blueprint was idiosyncratic: Adama Traore could hurtle past defenders at pace but rarely scored, making Diogo Jota’s goals more important; each did what the other could not. Forest have more conventional wingers, in Anthony Elanga and Callum Hudson-Odoi.
But that speed on the break gives them a similar penchant for giant-killing. They retain the distinction of being the only team to defeat Liverpool this season while, over their first two seasons after promotion, Nuno’s Wolves beat each of the supposedly big six. Perhaps his gameplan was not dominant enough against lesser sides to take them above seventh: Forest, however, do not have a top-15 finish in the top flight since 1996 so anything that high would be welcome.
And even if their season, featuring bans for Nuno, Gibbs-White and owner Evangelos Marinakis, can feel tarnished by the club’s sense that everyone is out to get them, it has nevertheless featured an impressive managerial renaissance. Nuno was October’s manager of the month; his fifth award, putting him behind only 11 managers in the Premier League’s history and, remarkably, ahead of Jose Mourinho as the most decorated Portuguese coach in that particular category.
As a more feted Portuguese manager, Ruben Amorim, prepares for his bow in the division, perhaps the coaching comeback of the season has come from his compatriot. Nuno kept Forest up last season but now there are hints he may return to the levels he reached at Wolves. And he has done it by being both different and yet similar.