A high defensive line is a nice theory, but swarming wasps don't care much for ideologies. As such, Ange Postecoglou's return to north London was accompanied by the nastiest of stings and a pair of reminders.
One was the old story of footballing food chains and the other concerned the challenge of remodelling Nottingham Forest in his image.
Here, those factors dovetailed into a mauling where the only bonus was that the beating might have been far more substantial.
If Postecoglou's hope was to hit the ground with the same breakneck speed with which he bolted in those early weeks at Tottenham, then this was a brutal awakening.