The Red Wall: Why Nottingham Forest are thriving this season with clever, defensive football

Nuno Espírito Santo’s team have finished the year in the top four of the Premier League table and there's little doubt that they deserve to be there.

Nottingham Forest finishing 2024 in the Premier League top four has undoubtedly been one of the biggest stories in English football this season. While some may put their inclusion near the top of the table down to the likes of Manchester United, Tottenham, Aston Villa and even Manchester City seriously faltering in the first half of the season, when we take a closer look at how Nuno Espírito Santo’s side have controlled games this season, there’s little doubt that they deserve to be dreaming of European football next season off the back of their own hard work.

The most striking thing about Forest this season is how well they execute their game plan each and every matchday. No other team in the Premier League has taken the lead more often in the Premier League than Santo’s team, while only Liverpool have gone behind fewer times than the Reds. Such a stat would naturally suggest that Forest have a habit of scoring early goals and clinging on to their leads, but that’s not exactly the case. While the percentage of their goals scored in the first 30 minutes of the first half is slightly higher than the league average (35% to 30%), their best period of goalscoring can actually be found in the first 30 minutes of the second half, where Santo’s team have scored a remarkable 50% of their league goals - which is considerably higher than the league average of 31%.

This tells us that Forest are perfectly adept at blitzing teams after the break, but it’s also a bit of a red herring that we would do well to avoid getting distracted by. Yes, the club can often sway a game in their favour early in the second half of matches, but the truly impressive feat comes well before that. After all, to score winning goals in the second half a team must first avoid conceding goals in the first half and that’s really where Forest thrive as a team. So far this season, Santo’s side have conceded just eight first half goals, which is a record matched by Liverpool and only bested by Arsenal and Fulham, who are both sitting on seven conceded goals. And it’s here that we can see why the club have quickly shot towards the top of this season’s league table.

The best defensive side in this season’s Premier League

As Sean Dyche said after his side’s 2-0 defeat this weekend, Forest are a team that defend and counter attack exceptionally well at home and on the road. It may not be the most exciting football in the world, but Santo’s side typically cede possession and space on the pitch in an attempt to limit the space in their defensive third. In a sense, opposition teams can enjoy plenty of time and space in the Forest half, but when it comes to very specific goal-scoring chances, the Reds are incredibly well-drilled in limiting the amount of shots on their own goals.

This is evident in the fact that only Brentford have conceded more crosses into their box by opposition teams than Forest, while Santo’s team sit sixth among their Premier League rivals for the most passes into their own box this season. But, crucially for Forest, those passes and crosses rarely turn into goal-scoring chances for opposing teams due to excellent defending from the likes of Murillo and Nikola Milenković, as well as the defensive midfielders in front of them. As a result, while Forest sit twelfth in the league for the fewest shots conceded in the league this season, they rise up to third and sit behind only Arsenal and Liverpool for the percentage of those shots that were allowed to be taken inside their own box.

There are two other stats that perhaps illustrate the effectiveness of this red wall in front of the Forest goalmouth. The first one is the club’s xG per shot conceded average - essentially a fancy way of equating the average quality of the chances the team concedes - which happens to be the second best in the Premier League season. The second stat is perhaps more instinctive to most football fans and relates to the average length of each shot the club has conceded in the league this season. Here, again, Forest are second in the league table, this time behind only Arsenal.

When combined, both stats do a good job of underlining the team’s ability to limit opposing sides to pot shots on the edge of a crowded box, rather than allowing them to get in behind and into one-v-one opportunities against Matz Sels in goals. This, in turn, has led to Forest becoming a team that have a defensive record that could rival the likes of Chelsea or Liverpool, while still remaining a side that average as many blocked shots per game as teams much further down the league table, such as Eveton or Ipswich Town.

How long can it last?

Nottingham Forest’s season so far has been built on a solid defensive foundation, but the big question is: can they keep it going? While their ability to defend is clear, the challenge in the second half of the campaign may lie in their attacking output. Chris Wood has been instrumental, scoring an impressive 42.3% of Forest’s league goals this season—a proportion only bettered by Erling Haaland at Manchester City in the league. However, that can also be seen as an over-reliance on the big striker. And should Wood pick up another hamstring injury, having missed 19 games in the last two seasons due to such issues, another injury to the target man could leave Forest vulnerable in attack.

In the worst-case scenario of a long-term absence for Wood, the club does have a capable alternative in Taiwo Awoniyi. The Nigerian striker may not yet have proven he can match Wood’s goal scoring tally, but he is well-suited to play the same target man role. This would allow Forest’s creative players, such as Callum Hudson-Odoi, Morgan Gibbs-White, as well as their attacking full-backs, to continue thriving within their well-drilled system. Sure, the Reds may not have the same goal output and may see a few wins turn into draws, but it’s unlikely to completely derail their impressive campaign.

Perhaps a more discrete but altogether more worrying concern may lie in the Forest midfield. Players like Elliot Anderson, Ryan Yates, and Nicolas Dominguez have all been exceptional this season and proved to be vital in protecting Forest’s defensive line. It would be all too easy to say Murillo or Milenković have enjoyed excellent, individual seasons to date, but the truth of the matter is that they have thrived in no small part due to the hard work done by the midfield in front of them. As such any serious injury to this midfield trio could allow a number of holes to appear in a previously watertight system.

While goals are certainly important for winning games, Forest’s surge up the league table this season has been down to their ability to defend as well as any team in the Premier League. And if they can maintain that in the second half of the league campaign, there’s no reason why they can’t still be challenging for Europe come May.