Nottingham Forest’s improvement has arguably been the story of the 2024-25 Premier League season. So, just how high up the table could they finish?
Everyone loves a Cinderella story.
Sure, they might ultimately fade away, but through the first 20 matchdays of the 2024-25 Premier League season, Nottingham Forest have been the revelation of the campaign, and no one saw it coming.
That isn’t to say that no Forest fans felt optimistic back in August. However, it’s not unfair to suggest a good year at the start of the season probably meant a top-half finish, at best, for most supporters. Some will have been steeling themselves for another relegation battle – anyone predicting a push for Champions League football would’ve been laughed out of the room (harshly, as it seems to be turning out).
Let’s not forget, 2023-24 was hardly vintage. Forest survived, yes, though not in emphatic fashion.
While their meagre haul of 32 points was the lowest ever by a club to avoid relegation from the Premier League, there was the caveat of them being hit with a four-point deduction for a breach of the competition’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
Luckily for Forest, Luton Town (26), Burnley (24) and Sheffield United (16) averaged just 22 points between them, the lowest ever recorded by the three teams to be relegated from the Premier League.
Over the prior 38-game seasons, Forest’s total of 32 points would’ve seen them relegated in 26 of a possible 28 campaigns – or 93% of the time.
Obviously the points deduction played a role, but even then, 12 of the prior 28 seasons with 38 games saw teams with 36 points or more get relegated. Fourteen clubs have gone down with at least 36 points; West Ham even suffered that fate in 2002-03 despite accumulating 42 points.
Of course, it is important to recognise that times do change. While last season was something of an anomaly when assessing the average points totals of the relegated teams, it did reflect the trend of clubs generally requiring fewer points to stay in the top flight now than 15, 20 years ago. But the point stands: Forest were pretty fortunate to retain their Premier League status.
To say they’re making the most of that in 2024-25 would be a gross understatement.
Monday’s 3-0 win at Wolves, who finished 14 points better off than Forest last term, took Nuno Espírito Santo’s side to 40 points from 20 games; that puts them level with Arsenal and means only league leaders Liverpool (46) have won more.
At the same stage last season, Forest had only collected 20 points. When looking back through Premier League history at points differences between consecutive seasons at the 20-game mark, only three teams have ever seen their returns improve by more than 20, highlighting just how impressive Forest’s improvement has been.
They’re five points clear of fifth-placed Newcastle United, making their place in the automatic Champions League qualification spots reasonably secure for the time being. And don’t forget, fifth could also be a route into the UCL if English clubs do well enough in Europe this term.
So, just how likely is Champions League qualification for Forest? This is where the Opta supercomputer comes into play.
The Opta supercomputer is a projection model that estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and the Opta Power Rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performances. The model considers the strength of opponents by using these match outcome probabilities and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition 10,000 times, subsequently providing us with the likelihood of teams finishing in each position in the competition.
In its latest simulations, Forest qualified for the UEFA Champions League via a top-four finish 17.6% of the time; if fifth ends up being enough for UCL qualification, that figure increases to 39.6% because they finished the season fifth in 22.0% of the simulations.
According to the supercomputer, Forest’s likeliest final position at the moment is sixth. That’s where they ended up in 2,220 of the 10,000 season simulations (22.2%), with the projection model casting some doubt over the team’s ability to sustain their current level – but that probably won’t come as a surprise to even the most ardent Forest fans.
If the Premier League ends up only getting four UCL spots again, then fifth will qualify for the UEFA Europa League. Similarly, if the winners of the EFL Cup qualify for the UCL/UEL (which seems likely), then sixth place will be enough for UEFA Conference League participation – the supercomputer rates Forest’s chances of a top-six finish at 61.8%.
Nevertheless, the omens for Forest are pretty good.
Prior to 2024-25, 70 teams have accumulated 40 points or more through their first 20 games of a Premier League season – only four of those have then failed to finish in the top four at the end of the season.
Leicester City in 2019-20 are the most recent example. They had 42 points after MD 20 and went on to finish fifth; Chelsea did exactly the same two years earlier, while Arsenal finished fifth in 2016-17 after tallying 41 points through MD 20.
The lowest any team have ever finished in the Premier League after accumulating at least 40 points from their first 20 games is sixth; Blackburn Rovers had exactly 40 points at this stage of the 1997-98 campaign before going on to end the campaign in sixth place.
Last season, Arsenal had 40 points after 20 matches and finished as runners-up; in 2015-16, Leicester had an identical record and went on to win the title in one of the most extraordinary achievements in English football history.
For what it’s worth, the Opta supercomputer gives Forest a 0.01% chance of emulating that Leicester team – that equates to one instance of winning the title out of a possible 10,000 simulations.
“So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
Technically, yes, why not?
However, we ought to look at the underlying numbers a little more closely. For example, we can analyse expected points in conjunction with actual points to get an idea of which teams are overperforming or underperforming.
Our expected points model simulates the number of goals scored by each side in every match based on the expected goals (xG) value of all shots taken. It then uses the simulated number of goals to determine the match outcome (win/draw/loss). Every match is then simulated 10,000 times, allowing the expected points for each team to be calculated based on the proportion of simulations they win/draw/lose.
This isn’t an exact science, of course, as expected goals data doesn’t account for several factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. But it’s still a decent barometer of how teams have performed through the first 20 matchdays (19 matchdays in the cases of Everton and Liverpool).
As you can see below, Forest have accumulated 40 points from 30.6 expected points, making them comfortably the biggest over-achievers in the league this term according to the model.
As such, the model also calculates that Forest should be five places lower than they are – no other team in the league is more than three places higher than they should be according to expected points.
It’s also worth considering fixture difficulty.
Over the next 10 matchdays, Forest face Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United – all at home. They also have potentially tricky away games against Newcastle and Bournemouth.
Over that period, the average ratings of their opponents in the Opta Power Rankings is 91.2, making their next 10 fixtures statistically the joint toughest in the Premier League.
Forest still have a long way to go, for sure, and perhaps they’ve been a little fortunate along the way to this point. But history will provide them with great encouragement, as will their own performances and results.
They may not finish in the top four; maybe they won’t get Champions League football at all. But everything points to Forest’s season being one to remember.
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