Nottingham Forest's surge towards the Premier League's top four was the most inspiring story of the 2024-25 campaign, and though a late collapse ultimately led to Nuno Espirito Santo's side finishing seventh, it was still the club's best top-flight performance in 30 years. The party mood at the City Ground was reignited three months later too, as Forest were promoted from the Conference League to the Europa League after Crystal Palace were controversially punished for breaching UEFA's multi-club ownership rules.
Meanwhile, Forest made 13 new signings in the summer transfer window to prepare for their first European campaign since 1996-97, including Bologna winger Dan Ndoye, Ipswich Town wonderkid Omari Hutchinson, and Brazilian sharpshooter Igor Jesus. From the outside, it looked like one of English football's great fallen giants was finally on a path back to the top.
But fast-forward to mid-October, and all those fans who dared to dream are now seeing their worst nightmares come to fruition. Forest have slipped to 17th in the table after winning just one of their first seven Premier League matches this term, and are the joint-lowest scorers in the division with only five goals.
They were also dumped out of the Carabao Cup in the third round by Championship side Swansea City, before beginning their Europa League journey with a 2-2 draw at Real Betis and a hugely disappointing 3-2 defeat at home to FC Midtjylland. Beloved coach Nuno was sensationally sacked just three games into the new season and swiftly replaced by polarising chaos facilitator Ange Postecoglou, who has steered a swaying ship straight into shark-infested waters.
A humiliating return to the Championship is a distinct possibility if something doesn't change . The question is: how on earth did Forest go from being genuine Champions League contenders to relegation fodder in such a short space of time?
Getty Images SportUCL spot goes begging
When Forest beat Manchester United 1-0 at the City Ground on April 1, courtesy of an early goal from ex-Red Devils winger Anthony Elanga, they were sat third in the Premier League on 57 points, only four behind second-placed Arsenal and 10 clear of Newcastle, who were just outside the Champions League spots in sixth. With only eight games remaining, Forest's destiny was in their own hands.
But then they completely ran out of steam. Nuno's men only won two of their next seven, with three defeats suffered against Aston Villa, Everton and Brentford, which saw them plummet to seventh. And yet still, they went into the final day knowing that a home win over fourth-placed Chelsea would secure passage to the Champions League.
Unfortunately, they blew their final chance, falling to a 1-0 loss against the Blues in a match desperately shot on quality. Forest put in plenty of effort, but were not inventive enough to break through Chelsea's rear-guard, mustering only two shots on target, with a close-range Lewis Cowill finish proving to be the difference between the two teams.
Considering that Forest had only just preserved their Premier League status on the final day of the 2023-24 campaign, seventh place was a massive achievement, and the City Ground faithful gave Nuno and his players the warm reception they deserved on their lap of honour. But the underlying reasons for their poor form down the finishing stretch were largely glossed over.
AdvertisementAFP'Success was never sustainable'
GOAL senior writer and die-hard Nottingham Forest supporter Chris Burton was one of the few who saw Forest's decline coming. "Success last season was never sustainable – Chris Wood’s xG, the clean sheets, and counter-attack style," he says. "The wheels started to fall off in the spring, and Forest never really recovered."
Indeed, Wood scored 20 of Forest's 58 Premier League goals last term – the best return of his entire career by far – from just 32 shots on target. The New Zealand international outperformed his expected goals (xG) total of 13.4 by 6.6, with Bryan Mbeumo the only man to beat that number at Brentford (7.7 difference from the same number of goals).
Forest also had more clean sheets than any other team in the league after their win over United (13), but failed to add to that tally in their final eight games, and Wood only scored twice in that period. The main reason for this was opponents cottoning onto Nuno's one-dimensional tactics.
Teams started to cede more possession to Forest instead of pushing them deep, so they were less susceptible to fast breaks. This meant that Forest had larger areas to defend with fewer numbers, and they couldn't get the ball up to Wood in dangerous positions as often. "Nuno stuck to his guns and was found out," Burton adds.
Getty/GOAL'War' with Edu
According to , Nuno wanted to adapt Forest's style over the summer to compete with the elite, but was hampered by a lack of urgency from the club's recruitment team. Forest invested £196 million ($23m) in new players, but several important deals were not closed until the end of the transfer window, and he expressed his frustration in front of the media.
"Dealing with doubts is the worst thing you can have in football," he said before Forest's opening game of the new season against Brentford. "Who is going to be [here], when are they [new signings] going to come? All these things create doubts. Our pre-season was very, very bad. We didn't win one game and scored one goal. The players are not supermen, we are going to need to rotate them. That's a major problem with the intensity and demands of the games."
One of Nuno's priority targets was Fulham winger Adama Traore, whom he worked with at Wolves, but the deal was reportedly blocked by Forest's new head of global football, Edu. claims that Nuno took a dislike to the former Arsenal sporting director from "their very first conversation". A full-blown internal "war" erupted, and the pair soon stopped speaking entirely.
But it was a battle that Nuno simply could not win, because Edu was a key part of the long-term project being pieced together by Forest's Greek owner Evangelos Marinakis.
GettyNuno sacking 'inevitable'
Edu and Marinakis both took Nuno's public complaints 'personally', and though he lifted the mood behind the scenes by delivering a 3-1 win against Brentford, it was only temporary. Nuno was still unhappy and invited Marinakis' wrath with another stunning outburst in his pre-match press conference ahead of Forest's trip to Crystal Palace.
"I have always had a very good relationship with the owner, last season was very, very close, almost on a daily basis. Our relationship has changed. It’s not so close," he admitted. "It’s not good, everyone at the club should be together, but it’s not the reality."
Nuno's comments brought back instant memories of when Marinakis appeared to confront his manager on the pitch after Forest's 2-2 draw with Leicester City back in May, which the club later clarified was because of the owner's concern for striker Taiwo Awoniyi, who had played despite picking up an abdominal injury that later required surgery. Any notion of a wider fallout was quashed at the time, and Nuno signed a new three-year contract the following month, but Marinakis started thinking about ripping up that agreement after seeing the manager air his grievances so brazenly. Forest battled to a 1-1 draw against Palace, but by that time, it was already being widely reported that Postecoglou was being lined up to replace Nuno.
A 3-0 defeat against West Ham at the City Ground on August 31 proved to be the final nail in the coffin for Nuno, who was dismissed during the subsequent international break. It was a shocking call considering his status as Forest's most successful manager of the modern era, but an "inevitable" one that fans understood, according to Burton. "Nuno threw his toys out of the pram when he didn't get the targets he wanted and lost some goodwill in the eyes of supporters with his behaviour," he says.
