Nottingham Forest’s rise up the Premier League has occurred in conjunction with them shunning the wider competition’s association with possession, showing there’s more than one way to succeed.
Sunday’s Premier League encounter between Nottingham Forest and Southampton at the City Ground may not have attracted a significant viewership of neutrals, but not only did it produce a thoroughly entertaining 105 minutes of action, it also represented an intriguing clash of cultures.
Granted, us stats nerd/boffins et cetera might’ve been the only ones thinking about the latter in a five-goal thriller, but it felt like a notable point in the context of the two teams’ deeply contrasting fortunes in 2024-25.
On the one hand, you had a struggling Saints side who’ve looked to dominate the ball for much of this season, which until Russell Martin’s sacking arguably made them one of the most extreme promoted sides in Premier League history. On the other, you had a Forest team who have no interest in just keeping the ball and have been astonishingly successful this term.
There are countless ways of highlighting how football has become increasingly obsessed with possession. And this isn’t to say that such approaches aren’t valid, but in aligning themselves to what some might (unfairly) say is a style akin to a classic, no-nonsense British variety, Forest have exceeded all expectations this season.
Their total of 44 points is already eight more than they won in 2023-24 even if you add on the four they lost to a points deduction, and they still have 16 matches to play. Sunday’s 3-2 win moved Nuno Espírito Santo’s side level with second-placed Arsenal, a return to European football for the first time since the mid-1990s very much on the cards.
Of course, their remarkable rise is the story of Forest in 2024-25, but it’s also refreshing how they’re doing it their own way.
Possession Is King – Or Is It?
Possession football is so in vogue that we are even seeing promoted teams trying to play in such a way straight off the bat in the Premier League.
Sure, Southampton have watered down their approach somewhat since Ivan Juric replaced Martin, but it’s still a far cry from the days of expecting more or less every promoted team to arrive in the top flight pumping hopeful long balls to the archetypal ‘big man up top’ for 90 minutes every week.
Now, lots of teams want to play out from the back, pass rings around opponents and score goals at the end of sequences of 32 passes… Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the point.
Forest represent something of a throwback, then.
For starters, they are averaging just 39.2% possession in the Premier League this season, the lowest of all 20 clubs.
This is probably the headline statistic for Forest when it comes to their style of play because we’ve become so accustomed to the best teams looking to subjugate their opponents through domination of the ball. Most of the best teams control possession, it’s simply a fact. Forest do not, however.
Not unrelated to that, Forest’s passing sequences begin – on average – just 39.2 metres from their own goal-line, meaning they’re also the second-deepest side in the Premier League this term.
This reflects how Forest are content to let their opponents keep the ball in areas where they’re unlikely to cause damage. It also goes some way to explaining why they don’t exactly fit into the trend of relentlessly pressing high up the pitch.
Their 128 high turnovers – winning the ball back within 40m of the opponents’ goal – is the third fewest in the league, and their PPDA (opposition passes per defensive action) of 16.2 is the highest. That means Forest allow their opponents 16.2 passes, on average, before they try to win the ball back.
And yet, curiously, their seven goal-ending high turnovers is more than anyone in the Premier League, highlighting how efficient they are at getting the ball into dangerous positions on the occasions they do win the ball high up the pitch.
Nevertheless, Forest recording the third-fewest high turnovers will be connected to them having the smallest proportion (19%) of their pressures in the final third of the pitch; that’s at least three percentage points lower than any other team (Leicester City – 22%).
But that shouldn’t be misconstrued as Forest not being a hard-working team. They’re just more pragmatic, careful even, than many other teams. Committing to a high press can have its drawbacks, potentially leaving a team vulnerable further back if the opposition are able to routinely pass through the press.
Instead, Forest focus more of their attention on winning the ball back in deeper positions as it makes them less likely to be punished in transition while also playing to their strengths on the counter – more on that later.
Leicester (32%) are the only Premier League team aside from Forest (34%) to record more than 30% of pressures inside their own defensive third.
It certainly seems to be paying off. Forest have conceded the third-fewest goals (excluding penalties) this season (21, level with Chelsea), also ranking only behind Liverpool and Arsenal (both 18.2) for non-penalty expected goals (xG) conceded in the top flight (23.8).
So, although their 291 shots faced is actually the seventh highest, the average xG value of those is just 0.08, the second lowest after Arsenal. This means the quality of the chances their opponents create is generally quite low.
The likes of centre-backs Nikola Milenkovic and Murillo have impressed, with the latter reportedly set to sign a new contract, while Mats Selz has been one of the standout goalkeepers in the Premier League this term.
But this still feels like more of a collective success than being down to any one individual.
Balancing Directness and Subtlety
When discussing teams who are defensively solid and don’t press particularly high, there can be a preference to pigeonhole them as boring, unimaginative, or even outdated.
But it doesn’t take anyone who watches Forest very long to see there’s a lot more to them. Their first-choice starting XI, for instance, includes some high-quality technical players, and going forward they can be quite thrilling.
Essentially, they’re far more subtle and deliberate than many give them credit for, with their proficiency for turning high turnovers into goals evidence of that.
Sure, they certainly can be a threat by lumping balls into the box for Chris Wood to get his head on, but their attacking play is more about springing forward as quickly as possible and slicing through their opposition with pace and precision.
“I think we all realise the game is changing, the intensity is higher now compared to the last seasons,” Nuno said at his unveiling in December 2023. “Teams are increasing their intensity and their ball possession. We have to go fast and try to adapt to this situation.”
While Wood may not be known for his mobility, Nuno generally loads his attack with an abundance of pacey players to complement the physical target man.
As a result, they’ve recorded the third-most shot-ending fast breaks (a counter-attack starting in their own half with the opposition’s defence at least partly disorganised) in the Premier League this term (30). It’s also worth highlighting that, although their 101 shots in transition (attempts while the opposition are transitioning to defence) is bettered by eight teams, that doesn’t quite tell the whole story as Forest see much less of the ball on average than all of those above them.
In Morgan Gibbs-White, Anthony Elanga, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Elliot Anderson, Forest have several players who can be particularly effective in such situations. All are comfortable with the ball at their feet and each of them can travel effectively at speed while in possession.
Hudson-Odoi has recorded 17 chance-creating carries (movements of at least 5m with the ball before creating a chance), a figure bettered by only five players; Gibbs-White ranks eighth among attacking midfielders for progressive carries (moving the ball at least 5m upfield); only six central/defensive midfielders can better Anderson’s 15 carries ending in a shot or chance created; Elanga tops the entire Premier League (minimum 500 minutes played) for average carry progress (15.7m).
But they don’t just get the ball forward via carries. They’re playing the fourth-greatest proportion of long balls (11.6%) in open play in the Premier League this term, while forward passes account for 38.9% of their open-play passes – the second most after Bournemouth (36.9%). Similarly, 11.8% of their open-play passes have been final-third entries – that’s the fourth-highest percentage, further evidence of their direct nature.
And yet, despite being so desperate to get the ball forward quickly, they are – as mentioned earlier – more precise than some might expect of a direct team.
Among the sides who’ve averaged under 50% possession this term, only Aston Villa (73.4%) can better Forest’s passing accuracy in the final third (71.6%), while Nuno’s men rank fourth for the proportion of open-play passes received between the lines (5.6%), which reflects a high level of intricacy in more congested areas of the pitch.
It’s impossible to speak about Forest without mentioning just how efficient Wood has been.
Since Nuno was hired, only Alexander Isak and Erling Haaland (25 each) can better Wood’s 23 non-penalty goals in the Premier League, whereas no-one (minimum 35 shots) can match the Kiwi’s conversion rate of 33.3%.
Undoubtedly, his emergence as a leading Premier League centre-forward has aided Forest and Nuno, but then there’s also a solid argument the manager’s tactics have helped create the perfect conditions for Wood to thrive. He plays in a team who are at their best when causing – and capitalising on – defensive chaos, and having built up confidence, he’s gobbling up chances at an incredible rate. After all, his career-wide conversion rate in the top flight prior to Nuno joining was considerably lower at 18.5%.
There’s more to Forest than just Wood, however, and they’re a far more interesting and entertaining side to watch than they get credit for.
In a league that sometimes feels homogeneous, Forest being successful while mixing it up is a breath of fresh air.
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