The pilot flying expedited descent as instructed using an unspecified autopilot mode. The 2500 callout looks to me like it got his attention that things were getting out of control and triggered him to fly manually in order to try and recover the situation, which is where things ironically only got worse.
Kit you point out rightly that there is a discrepancy of 18 seconds in the report and say that this is very bad. I am not completely sure what you mean, but I think this may well be a 'Zahlendreher' e.g. 24 is 42 reversed (in German we say the numbers the other way around) and am unsure how relevant it is. Anyway to me it looks like the pilot flying got behind the aircraft. ATC were not particularly helpful, but at the end of the day the pilot flying carries the responsibility and needs to say if something is not going to work out.
Your profile says you fly the 737, as I did before flying the Airbus. The basic principles are pretty similar. A good strategy to recover from being way above the glide is to fully configure and slow right down (lower ground speed less vertical speed needed). This is not something ATC always seem to understand and is definitely not compatible with the instruction to maintain 170 kts.
This is a rumour network for professional pilots. For most of us it is 99% entertainment and maybe 1% really useful. But just sometimes there are real nuggets and can be very instructive way earlier than other sources, for example some of the original information on the Coronavirus. This one looks like a number of other situational awareness incidents I can remember for example the Ryanair visual in Memmingen some years ago. The final report will hopefully be more instructive.