Premier League: Nottingham Forest 1 (Woods 65) Crystal Palace 0
Chris Wood is keeping some good company these days. His strike midway through the second half, which brought Nottingham Forest their first home win of the season, means that only Erling Haaland and Cole Palmer have scored more than the 16 Premier League goals he has plundered since Nuno Espírito Santo took charge at the City Ground just before last Christmas.
The New Zealand forward will be 33 by the time Nuno, starting a three-game suspension from the touchline, celebrates his anniversary but celebrating they surely will be. Thanks to Wood’s fifth league goal of this season, Forest are nestling happily in eighth place in the table after this hard-earned victory over a Crystal Palace team who remain entrenched in the relegation zone.
Wood had already seen three cast-iron chances go begging in the first half before he dispatched the shot that won this game. Dean Henderson, the former Forest goalkeeper, can claim an inadvertent assist with a weak hand to try to keep out Wood’s 20-yard effort.
Bryan Roy and Stan Collymore are the only other players to have reached the 20-goal mark in the Premier League for Forest that Wood reached here.
‘Premier League, what the f*ck?’ sang Forest fans before and midway through the first half as their sense of injustice over recent sanctions fuelled their team’s energetic start.
With head coach Nuno, owner Evangelos Marinakis and captain Morgan Gibbs-White all receiving bans for touchline or tunnel tantrums, as well as James Ward-Prowse for his red card in the 1-1 draw at Chelsea, Forest were not so much depleted as being in danger of spontaneous combustion.
The club’s disciplinary problems may have come during an excellent start to the campaign but Forest were winless at the City Ground this season. There appears to be a need for some calm amid Forest’s fury but they still had the opportunity to draw level on points with seventh-placed Tottenham – highlighting how good their away form has been – as they set about deconstructing a Palace team without a league win of any description.
While Forest had the better of possession early on there was a gaping hole in front of their defence which Palace nearly profited from. Eberichi Eze, playing in a free role just off, or even at times ahead of Eddie Nketiah, waltzed into this welcome space and curled a 20-yarder just wide.
The home side created three excellent first-half chances of their own for Chris Wood but it was Nketiah who almost broke the deadlock for the visitors when he foraged into that same vacant area in which neither Ryan Yates nor Nicolás Domínguez were stamping their defensive presence. The £25 million former Arsenal striker was unfortunate to see his powerful effort swerve against the outside of a post.
Yates also struck the woodwork at the other end with a header but only Wood, normally so prolific, will know how he went into the interval without adding to his tally. From a corner, his header was cleared off the line by Jefferson Lerma and in the next attack, from Elliot Anderson’s deep cross, Wood dived to head high and wide. Then in first-half stoppage time, he could not divert Anderson’s brilliant cross past Henderson in the Palace goal.
It was Palace who came closest to a decisive score in the opening stages of the second half. Firstly, Matz Sels did superbly to save a volley from Eze and also blocked the follow-up from Daichi Kamada, although the Japanese midfielder was offside.
Álex Moreno came to Forest’s rescue as he threw himself to block Will Hughes’s shot after Nketiah had done well down the left wing and pulled a cross back.
Forest’s assistant head coach Rui Pedro Silva, no doubt in consultation with Nuno, had seen enough. Jota Silva was stripped and ready to go even as Eze dispatched two more shots from distance, the first tipped brilliantly on to the crossbar by Selz and the second deflecting behind.
Then came Wood’s big moment. Goodness knows, he had been knocking on the door enough. Trevor Chalobah could only head weakly clear from the right corner of the penalty area and Wood did not hesitate as he unleashed a low shot from 20 yards that squeezed under a forlorn Henderson’s right arm. – Guardian
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