Nottingham Forest midfielder Orel Mangala is being used all wrong by Steve Cooper, according to Lewis McGugan. The Reds player was once again in the starting eleven as Forest lost 2-0 to Tottenham at the City Ground on Friday night.
Mangala has come on leaps and bounds during the 2023/24 campaign. The 25-year-old has managed to hold down a regular place in the team and he’s started to show his true colours in the Forest midfield.
Mangala signed for Forest in the summer transfer window of 2022. He checked in from Stuttgart and cost a relatively cheap £12.5 million having starred in the Bundesliga.
This was yet another fantastic performance from the midfielder. Forest are starting to see the best of Mangala now, although McGugan would like Cooper to tweak the midfield role he plays.
He thinks that the Belgian should be influencing games higher up the pitch in future. McGugan thinks that with other players doing the defensive stuff, there is no reason for Mangala to be so deep.
He told the Forest Focus Podcast: “I saw it again on Friday night but Mangala for me is the best midfielder in the squad. He’s probably being used a bit deep still, he needs to be in an area that’s a bit higher up. When you’ve got (Ryan) Yates, (Ibrahim) Sangare and (Cheikhou) Kouyate around you, just release him, go and let him go and have an impact 30 yards higher up the pitch. He’s got too much quality to be sitting deep.”
The talented Mangala has been absolutely brilliant for Forest this season. He scored in the 2-0 win over Aston Villa but it’s his work rate and tenacity around the pitch that has caught the eye.
That said, McGugan does make some good points. It emerged recently that Cooper had been utilising Sangare out of position to try and help him settle but swapping his roles with Mangala makes perfect sense now.
Mangala has the guile to impact games in the attacking third. He has good feet and he’s also very probing when it comes to picking out passes.
Cooper has to now get round pegs in round holes. In Mangala, Forest have a player who is playing out of his skin and utilising him further forward is an experiment that the head coach simply has to try in the coming weeks.
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