Time to Panic? YATESY'S ESPRESSO BAR (take out), 22nd October 2026

tl;dr - NO

If you trawl social media, look at the "news" sites or check the bookie's odds, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Oliver Glasner is on shaky ground. I mean, he's sharing that ground with Mr Marinakis. Of course he's in trouble. 

Jamie Carragher said "the only problem Glasner has is who the owner is ... the owner is very quick to change managers". Jamie Carragher played for Liverpool so knows a lot about football.

Former Man United scout (and noted expert on goings on at the City Ground) Mick Brown warned that "Glasner is coming under increasing pressure ... and may be fighting for his job in the near future". Adding "it's been a very slow start and you're starting to see fans expressing their frustrations towards him now".

And according to former Manchester City financial adviser (excuse me one second ... hahahahahaha ... sorry about that) Stefan Borson, Marinakis would be facing a payout worth around £7.5m ... the owners' (sic) hesitancy to pay that money that will buy Glasner some time.

But, if you ask me, it's a load of ball-bags.

xG, xP and the xTable

Here are the pass maps from the Coventry and Palace games. 

Two things stand out to me. 

Firstly, look at Liam Delap. Almost no passes to him at all in either game.

Secondly, look at the shape. The infamous "horseshoe" that we saw all too often under Ange and Dyche. The players passing the ball about from side-to-side, breaking down the wings, getting thwarted and then returning to pass over to the other side. 

Here's the pass map from the Arsenal game. 

This time Dan Ndoye is much more isolated. 

But look at Delap; the ball from Sels to Delap is up there, bringing him into the game. And instead of horseshoeing the ball from side to side, we fed Neco and attacked down the left (with Danny Munoz crossing the pitch several times to get involved).

Lots of people dislike xG. Football is about emotions, not data (although tell that to Tony Bloom). 

By the way, if you're not sure what xG actually is, it's very simple - it's just an average. Over the last 10 or 15 years (however long they've been measuring it), 75% of penalties are scored - so a penalty has an xG of 0.75. 3 shots from the half way line have been scored, so that has an xG of 0.0000003 (OK, I made that one up). You just add up the xG of all the shots taken during a game and that's your xG for the match. Then you compare it to the actual goals to see if you're under-or-over-performing. 

In Nuno's glory season, we overperformed our xG by a long way. Overperformance on xG means you're going to have a fall soon. Guess what, we did. 

But so far, this season, we're massively underperforming our xG. So much so that if you look at the "Expected Points" table (measuring the results if xG were actual goals), then Forest are 6th. And I think we'd all take that. 

The thing to remember is that if you're underperfoming your xG, at some point, you're going to start improving. 

History repeating

Oliver Glasner is a serial winner. 

He won promotion and then Europa League qualification with LASK.

He won Europa League and Champions League qualification at Wolfsburg.

He won the Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt.

He won the FA Cup, Community Shield and Conference League with Crystal Palace. 

But all those successes followed a pattern. 

He starts slowly.

Five games before his first win at Wolfsburg. One win in ten at Frankfurt. Not just one win in nine at Palace, but a mere four wins in the first half of the season. 

And just like Forest, his early months at Palace were spent transforming a passive side into one that presses high up the pitch. Plus Glasner has hinted he did not want to overhaul the style of play too quickly (learning from Ange's mistakes). 

But we've seen glimpses of what he's trying to do ... especially in the Arsenal game.

In the first half we sat in a low block, ceding possession and frustrating the champions. But in the second half, Arsenal could not settle on the ball, as we pressed high up the pitch. Even after conceding, we looked like we deserved to snatch a point from the game. And, notably, it was the first time I felt that we could play in the opposition half without opening ourselves up to 4 vs 2 counter-attacks. 

However, it was only one game. And past performance is no guarantee of future winnings. There are definite rumblings about our current standing. 

The City Ground

I'm not saying that the opinions of people who don't regularly go to games is less valid ... well I kind of am (in the nicest possible way). The reason is if you don't go to games, the way you experience football is completely different. 

If you go to lots of away games (looking at you George, Tom and Katie) you've got a level of commitment and dedication that most of us are unable to reach.

If you go to home games, like I do, you get to hear the chatter in the stands and experience what the crowd, and the players, are really feeling. And, just as importantly, you don't have your experience mediated by instant replays and pundits (who generally know little about what's actually happening at the club) chattering on at half time.

Going back to the Coventry game ... there were murmurings and a couple of boos at full time. There was an air of "we saw this last year and we don't want to go back there".

But after the Arsenal game, there was none of that. There was heartfelt applause and appreciation for the shift the players had put in.

We could see it wasn't an Ange game, it wasn't a Dyche game.

The players knew their jobs, they knew how to attack, they knew how to defend. We just didn't get the drop of the ball. 

It had been a Glasner game.

Last season Mr Marinakis could feel the frustration, the anger, the desperation, around the ground.

And, as we've often said, the difference between Vangelis and other Premier League owners is that he's a fan first, owner second. If we, in the ground, are not happy, he takes it on board.

Which brings me to the most important reason that we have no need to panic.

κύριος Ευάγγελος Μαρινάκης

The Big Man sits almost directly opposite me. When things aren't going well, I can practically see the dark clouds gathering over his throne in the Peter Taylor stand. 

But, no dark clouds so far. In fact I've not seen him once this season. 

That suggests he's relaxed about how things are going. And if he's relaxed, I'm pretty sure the rest of us can relax too.