New boss Mont has had a Phil of thrillers
LIFE is going to be anything but dull under Philippe Montanier at the City Ground.
The new Forest boss saw his side beat Wigan to notch up their second 4-3 win of the season already.
But the Frenchman warned his players they must find a better balance between defence and attack if they are to flourish this campaign.
Montanier said: “We left it too open for Wigan to come back three times.
“I can accept that happening once. But to repeat it again and again, we will give ourselves more problems in the future if we do that.
“We cannot continue to defend in the same way and cannot concede the goals that we have.
“But we do have the players here to change things. It is a mental issue. Our defenders take a lot of risk and when we attack we need a better balance defensively.
“We cannot take so many risks. We need to find the right mentality.
“I enjoy the spirit of the team and we showed our character to win but there needs to be a balance. We have to learn quickly because I cannot accept this.”
The Latics thought they had snatched a point when Will Grigg’s second goal equalised for the third time in the 86th minute – but Thomas Lam had other ideas with an injury-time winner.
Britt Assombalonga had put Forest ahead, before Michael Jacobs equalised for the first time. Oliver Burke netted two well-taken goals to twice put Forest in control, with Grigg twice finishing from close range to level.
Lam, though, had the final say as Montanier’s Reds followed up their 4-3 win over Burton with another seven-goal thriller.
Forest could have killed things off at 2-1 but Adam Bogdan dived to his left to save substitute Apostolos Vellios’ penalty.
Wigan boss Gary Caldwell said: “All four goals were avoidable but Thomas Lam should have been sent off.
“He should not have been on the pitch to score the goal.
“The linesman can see what happened. We just wanted the referee and the linesman to do their job.”