Nottingham Forest 3 (Sangare 15, Gibbs White 68, Anderson 90+1)​

Leeds United          1 (Nmecha 13)                                                

 

9th November 2025. EPL

30,708.

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Back-to-back defeats and another three goals conceded is not the best way to go into another international break. Once again, we looked impotent in attack and were made to look a very ordinary side by a team looking to record only their second league win of the season. For Forest, I’m sure they will take great heart from beating a fellow struggler, while for Leeds, the pressure ramps up again, knowing that when we return in two weeks, we have a run of several games against top-half teams. Only the most optimistic of Leeds fans will believe we’ll add to our points tally between now and Christmas, and that would surely mean we’ll be in the bottom three by then.

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We got off to the perfect start, too, which somehow makes the later capitulation even worse! When Sean Longstaff won an unlikely header in midfield, knocking the ball forward to Noah Okafor, Leeds were suddenly breaking forward with pace and intent. Okafor had to stretch to poke the ball to Brenden Aaronson, but the Forest defence suddenly looked in disarray as he, in turn, pushed the ball into the path of Lukas Nmecha.  He suddenly looked like prime Harry Kane as he performed an immaculate step-over before drilling the ball hard and low through a defender’s legs and into the bottom corner of the net! For all of two minutes, I’m sure most Leeds fans, like me, thought this was going to be a rip-roaring Leeds performance to settle the nerves.

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Of course, we now know it was nothing more than a false dawn, and it lasted barely two minutes. Maybe the fact that Lucas Perri had already pulled off a stunning save on his line from a deflected shot should have been the warning that this was going to be another tough afternoon. Perri was quickly back on his feet to take the ball off the toes of the Forest striker, following up, but that eventually triggered an offside flag. After that moment and the Nmecha goal, though, there was little to cheer for the away following, and the game followed a template we’ve seen plenty of times here at the City Ground.

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Perri sort of used up the credit he’d just built as he could only palm out what looked like a straightforward ball into his post code, and Sangare, following up, side-footed the ball back past him into the net. We held the lead for two flipping minutes; two flipping minutes!

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For the rest of the first half, all thirty-plus minutes of it, Leeds managed not a single shot more than the one Nmecha fired into the Forest net. One shot in 45 minutes of football, while Forest managed ten, despite the sides sharing possession equally in the first half. The Reds also won four corners, although Leeds did deal with those without incident. Overall, though, Leeds were poor. We looked sluggish, uninspired and predictable.

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For most of the second half, Leeds were marginally better, believe it or not, and we outshot Forest to the tune of nine to four, but, at crucial moments in defence, we were sadly lacking in the quality needed to keep any Premier League side at bay, even one like Forest that had found goals so hard to come by until today.

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One problem that is becoming increasingly obvious is our failure to prevent the opposition from crossing into our box. All Leeds fans love our full-backs – Jayden and Gabriel – but only when they are bombing forwards. As defenders, they often fall short. So it was again today that, within minutes of his arrival on the pitch, Forest substitute Omari Hutchinson had the beating of Gabriel Gudmundsson. Hutchinson jinked one way, then the other and then clipped a perfect curling cross onto the head of the dangerous Gibbs-White, and his glancing touch sent the ball into the corner of the net.

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It wasn’t long before Daniel Farke did what he always does in this situation; he sent on as many forwards as he had available to try to rescue something from the game. On came Piroe, Calvert-Lewin and Dan James, aka the cavalry. It didn’t really look like working, though, and all we managed was one follow-up left-foot curler from DJ that stretched the home keeper. As time ebbed away, Farke twisted again, this time turning to Jack Harrison, who replaced Gudmundsson. I’m not sure if Gabriel had a knock or if this was an attempt to bolster the attack at the expense of defence. The final change saw the return of Pascal Struijk in place of Jaka Bijol, a move that may well signal the end of the experiment to assess Bijol's potential. In my humble opinion, Jaka is not much, if any, improvement over Pascal, and indeed, I think Pascal provides us with a little more forward drive from deep positions. We’ll see after the break whether Pascal really has won his place back – if nothing else, it takes the defence back to the personnel that at least recorded the odd clean sheet early in the season.

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Unfortunately, Forest took the opportunity to focus even more on our left side once Jack was on, and Harrison, whatever he may be, is not a defender, and it was no surprise that the marauding Hutchinson got past him in the final minutes. The Forest man, then on the goal side of Jack, cleverly made sure his legs tangled with Harrison’s, and down he went to win a penalty. Hutchinson was basically too clever for us. Anderson smashed the penalty past Perri, and that was game, set, and match for the Forest.

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Slowly but surely, Leeds are falling towards the relegation zone, and any betting man, looking at our fixtures between now and the end of the year, and looking at how we are playing, would surely have his money on us being in the bottom three as we enter the second half of the season. Most seasons, the halfway point is a reliable predictor of the full-season outcome.

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Once again, it isn’t that Forest were that much better than Leeds, but at crucial moments, we failed to deal with simple situations, and they had the quality to make us pay. We keep focusing on our lack of a threat up front, but for me, our inability to prevent crosses and then deal with them is as much of an issue. We have not been helped by a number of players not giving us their A-game recently – Jayden Bogle was again a shadow of the player we know he can be, for example. Meanwhile, in midfield, there were very ordinary performances again from both Stach and Longstaff. Is this a lack of form or a lack of class?

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All the fingers will again be pointing at Daniel Farke, I’m sure, but I really don’t think any manager can get a different tune out of this group of players. Having said that, we looked far better in the early weeks of the season than we have in our last two games, so maybe there is still hope if we can just find our form again. Perhaps, in January, with the help of a couple of gems, we can sparkle again.