Vitor Pereira - The Deep Dive

Forest will be hoping that its 4th time lucky this season with Vitor Pereira - let's look at his coaching career and his footballing principles.

Onto their 4th manager of the season, Forest have appointed ex-Wolves boss Vitor Pereira to help stave off the ever-growing threat of relegation, whilst also still trying to fight on the European front too. Most will only remember him from his very up and down spell at Wolves, but what about the rest of his managerial career?

Forest will be Pereira’s 15th job as a manager or head coach at his 14th different team (he’s had two spells at Forest’s next opponent Fenerbache). Pereira started his managerial career in his native Portugal, with roles moving up the leagues at clubs like Sanjoanense, Espinho, Santa Clara & eventually Porto (after a couple of spells as head coach of their junior sides).

His career went on to take him to numerous countries and continents, with spells in Saudi Arabia, Greece (with a successful short spell under Evangelos Marinakis), Turkey, Germany, China & Brazil.

Short spells at clubs seems to be the key trend for Pereira, something that is probably quite appealing from a Forest point of view on this occasion. The other appealing thing, Pereira has a win rate of over 40% in all but 3 of his 15 jobs.

Tactical Flexibility

Vitor Pereira quite clearly is a coach with a tremendous amount of experience in various different football climates. He’s shown a great deal of flexibility in how he sets his teams up, both in playing style and in formation. Therefore it’s pretty difficult to predict confidently how he’s going to set up this Forest side.

In his most recent spell in football at Wolves, he came in and stuck pretty rigidly with a 3-4-2-1 formation. It was only in the early stages of this season that he veered away from that, but we’ll get onto his spell at Wolves later.

Overall in European football, Pereira’s most favoured formation has been a 4-2-3-1, essentially the same formation Forest have set up in throughout the last 18 months. Over in Asia & in South America, he preferred to use a 4-3-3.

One of my biggest gripes with Sean Dyche’s management of Forest was his lack of changes both in game and from week to week. Pereira’s CV suggests he’s very comfortable coaching very different formations, so I’d expect him to try and adapt to what he feels best suits the players, rather than trying to go with his own style (like Dyche & Postecoglou), who didn’t seem to worry about the existing strengths of the squad.

What Does Pereira Do When Appointed Mid-Season?

Pereira’s appointment by Marinakis to Olympiacos in January 2015 was his first where he took over a side during an ongoing campaign. He had a very successful short spell in Piraeus, leading his side to a league & cup double.

Since then, he’s had another 4 mid-season appointments, and on each occasion has always returned at least one point per game in his first 10 matches in charge.