Stick to Football
Ange: Forest Regrets, Spurs Chaos & Beating United in Europe | Stick to Football 117
19 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Just before we get started, a quick thanks to our partners and clothing. We hope you enjoy the show. Are you working on the World Cup, Ange?
Sort of thinking about it, yeah. Because I don't know what I'm doing work-wise.
For ITV again or for...? Not sure yet. It's kind of disgusting, yeah. Did you enjoy the last one?
I don't mind it. I don't like kind of... the in-between, like filling up your time in between. So if there's games on, it's all right. But yeah, I don't mind. Mate, look, I'm kind of an introvert by nature, but football-wise, I can talk.
Chapter 2: What insights does Ange share about his upbringing in Australia?
Yeah. Do you want to have a tea? Yeah, I'll have a tea. Thank you, mate.
Do you know something, Andrew? I was thinking about that, you know. Thanks, man. It's more than hammering, to be fair. If you're playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday, you're doing Friday interviews, you're doing Saturday after the game, you're doing Tuesday before the game, you're doing Wednesday night after the game, you're doing Friday before the Saturday.
And I just did it for four months and we had, believe it or not, we were in the Europa League and the Copa del Rey and I remember it was killing me. I said this to you before, aren't I? Those six press conferences a week were killing me.
I did 130-something last year. Wow. Because we had 60 games. So I did pre, post... posts you could do four or five. Yeah. And sort of the individual ones. So I would have done between 130, 100. And mate, you know what?
It drains you, doesn't it?
It does. And you're going to say some stupid things in there, but you're not always going to get it right, you know?
We were talking about when you're playing Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday as a manager.
Yeah.
Andy said he did 130 press conferences last year because he did 60 games in the Europa League.
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Chapter 3: What regrets does Ange express about his coaching decisions?
And I remember, to be fair, you were at one of my last press conferences. Yeah, your last one in Barcelona. I got beat 7-0 by Barcelona. Oh, I was there.
So he just interviewed Suarez.
It's actually... If you go on YouTube, you'll see that press conference. I mean, it was brutal. Oh, yeah. It was brutal.
When will you get out of our club? Really? Oh, yeah.
Do you know when you think sometimes, like, in this country, we ask difficult questions or sometimes pundits are a bit... Nowhere to be lied. Just watch that press conference back. It was... Do you not think you should... It started off with, like, do you not think you should hand your notice in? Do you not think you should resign?
Oh, my God.
And then it was... Then you were, like, the owner asking you the question. It was, like, when are you going to get out of this club? You know, when are you going to realise and be honest that you can't do this? It was literally, like, it was a barrage and it was, like, ten minutes of it, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Great.
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Chapter 4: How does Ange reflect on his experience at Spurs?
What do you say if someone says that, though? Like, when are you going to get out of our club?
I still believe in the process. Project.
You can have a project.
This project is only just getting started. I always win in my first year, I was going to say. Stick to football is brought to you by Arm Clothing.
don't push this it's mad it's crazy i had the worst car in the world i used to pick up one of the greatest places picking up becks you know i don't know whatever kind of car because i'm driving Bentley now so you got your roots He's not scared of anything, mate. He's a winner. Does he cross the line? Yeah, he does.
You know, he'd cross the line at training sometimes and the coaches go, oh, you know. I go, well, you go tell him. I'm not telling him. No one's going to talk to me about rivalry. I lived and breathed it up there. I remember the first year we won the double. Rangers were in the Europa Cup final. I got more text messages the night they lost the Europa Cup final than the one we won.
To have a career, you're going to go through tough times. And when you're going through those tough times, appreciate them. Because the unhappiest I've ever been is when I haven't been in the W. It's the old adage of, you know, success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. Everyone contributed to the Europa League. The league was all on me, by the way.
When you said, I always win in my second year, it's obviously true. But it was ballsy, that, wasn't it?
Yes. I think we'd lost to Arsenal when the reporter asked me and... But I just thought, you know what, I've got to double down on this because I'll get eaten alive here. Like I said, we spoke about Spurs and the kind of club. I've just got to back myself here. And I think if nothing else, it resonated with the players, right, and the coaching staff.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Ange identify in modern football management?
And I think that all paid dividends for me at the end, right, when I needed the players and the staff. Because that's the one thing you know and you would have known, that even you, Roy, when things aren't going well, if you've lost the dressing room, then you're gone. You go, I've got no chance here. But I never felt that, you know. I always felt the dressing room is in the players and the staff.
always rock solid. And I think part of that was publicly I wasn't backing down, even though there was enough there for me to at least doubt what we were going to do.
Do you feel like the press liked you? Because I always thought your interviews, no, I thought they'd come across likeable. I did. I don't know about likeable.
I think I divided opinion. Look, I think with me it's Because I've had a unique path to here. It's taken me, like, 20... I mean, I think people literally, sort of, on this side of the world, anyway, found out about me maybe when I was at Celtic, but more two years ago.
Mm-hm.
When you get to sort of a certain age like me, I can't pretend to be anybody but who I am, you know. So what you saw in public is who I am in sort of private. I'm the same kind of person, you know. I'm not trying to... Because I just don't feel the need now to try and sell myself or try and portray something I'm not. So...
And that sometimes rubs people up the wrong way because if somebody had a crack at me, I'd have a crack back.
That's the perception, Ang, isn't it? Someone's journey, whatever way you've come in. Some people then would look at managers going, they don't deserve a big job. No, that's right, yeah, yeah. Because they'd only focus on what you've done.
It's Celtic, obviously, but you go, no, if you look back, somebody, whether you rate different leagues or whatever country, you've managed hundreds and hundreds of games. So the perception might have been, I don't know, like with some of the media, did you warrant this job or did you warrant that? And you're having battles from day one.
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Chapter 6: What are Ange's reflections on his coaching decisions at Forest?
It's on me.
It's a big job doing it. To be honest, I mean, look, you should...
It's not for me to advise you, but I wouldn't be beating myself up if I was Ange, because the reality of it is, if you think you've got Gibbs White, you've got Anderson, you've got those two centre-backs, and you're in Europe, and not even Forrest, to be fair, have invested quite a lot of money in those players, you think, I can go and work with a good group of players.
My issue is not with that stuff, but as soon as I have a difficult spell, whether it be after a week or a month, you are gone, because he's got previous for that. You want to walk to someone who's going to go, get through a sticky patch.
Well, you said no to him, didn't you, Roy, initially when you met with him? You had that conversation. I'd have to go on with Martin, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah.
And I would do with Martin. I regret it. No, I don't regret it, no. That was a different experience, and it's different being a manager to an assistant. No, that was a different scenario. Don't bring that into it.
Stick to Football is brought to you by Arm Clothing. I interviewed Mickey van de Ven. I don't know if you saw it, maybe about two months ago.
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Chapter 7: How did Ange adapt his tactics for the Europa League final?
And he was really impressive, which is an aside. But he said that... You talk about style. You did change. He said that you did change towards the cup final, towards the Europa League cup final with the United, that you did go more defensive, you played more pragmatic. And the players had had a conversation with you about that. Just talk us through that.
Yeah, it's the old adage of... you know, success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. Everyone contributed to the Europa.
The league was all on me, by the way.
I thought that as he was saying that. That's totally on me, but the Europa, we all contributed to that. That is so true. No, look, I think... So my thought process around that was we kind of got to... February, I think we were. We just lost to Liverpool because we had a deep run in the Carabao Cup, second leg. And, you know, we won the first leg 1-0, but we were on fumes by then.
So, you know, Liverpool batted us. I said, we're out of the sort of Carabao Cup. I said, OK, we're 16 points from relegation. That isn't going to happen. We've got a real narrow path to winning something, right?
Yeah.
for this football club, which we know what that means, but also Champions League, Champions League money. So, again, I'm obsessive about the game. I did a deep dive on, okay, who's won the Europa League in recent times? Unai's won it three times. Jose's won it. Oliver Glasner's won it. I think Diego's won it. Simeone's.
There's a thread through there of the kind of football because it's different from the Champions League. The Champions League is a bigger variance of quality. The top teams in the Champions League to the bottom, massive. And you always get the best teams kind of winning it.
In the Europa, it's not that much because, you know, the sort of teams from the Premier League compared to the teams that finish fourth or fifth in Germany or Spain, it's quite competitive. What I saw what they were doing, well, they were playing pretty risk-free, very strong defensive organisation.
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Chapter 8: What challenges does Ange see in managing top clubs like Manchester United?
Well, they were doing that in the league with Antonio for two years and they didn't like it. So that's not what the club wanted. But this was about a process of getting to winning a competition that sort of had a clear sort of strategy you could do it. So we did. And if you look at the final, I did a talk on it on the weekend.
By the end of it, I'd put on Kevin Danso, turned the back four into a back five. Then I think I put on Judd Spence. I think I had about seven defenders on there. And I was looking at the bench to see if there was any other defenders on the floor. I could hear my dad going, what are you doing? And, you know, we've got a line of about seven players on the edge of our box at one stage.
But at the same time, I knew if we shut down Bruno, they weren't going to score. I just felt with United, the way they sort of set up with Ruben and the kind of ways they would try to break us down if we were really solid defensively. As long as we scored, we had to get a goal. We were still aggressive with our press. You know, that didn't change.
But in terms of being a little bit more direct, yeah, for sure, and a lot more sort of defensively rigid, that definitely happened. But that was because I, in my mind, have gone, well, what a unique opportunity, and we know this works. I reckon we can replicate.
You talk about having sort of seven defenders on the back line. I think probably one of the most... Chelsea? Yeah. One of the most... Whatever the word you want to call it, bizarre or amazing things I've seen in football was when you had probably, what's it, do you have nine men? Yeah, two. And it felt like you had everyone. On the half island.
And on Monday Night Football, you know you've got the group chat and you'd always have whatever you pitch in the group chat. The pitch is that. Because it's just something I've never seen in football where every single player on the pitch was in this sort of like, this area. It was just like... Oh no, it was... It was an unbelievable game, wasn't it?
Yeah.
4-1 in the end. But at 2-1, yeah, 2-1, we had one disallowed and then another one just missed to make it 2-2. And then they got two sort of runs at the end. And it was bizarre because a lot of it and sort of it was kind of I was caught between two things. I got a lot of joy because it was the players driving it. They're going, no, he wants to play a high line. And it was turning into a foot race.
We're standing halfway along. They play and off we go. Yeah, yeah. And there's a clip, you know, you might get it on YouTube of Renes Michels in Holland with Cruyff doing a ridiculous offside where they all just run to the... Have you seen it?
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