Even when Nottingham Forest was the king of Europe, winning back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, and in the years since, one thing has eluded the team since 1969. In those 55 years, Nottingham Forest had not beaten Liverpool at Anfield: 29 matches, seven draws, and 22 losses, across the Premier League, FA Cup, and League Cup. Forest had been out of the Premier League since 1999, but since its return in 2022, the futility in Merseyside had continued, with two losses in two tries.
That changed on Saturday:
Forest's 1-0 victory against a Liverpool side that had looked flawless through its first three games is remarkable, but it was not out of the realm of possibility entering Saturday. After a less-than-inspiring 17th place finish last season, in which the side scored the fourth-fewest goals in the league and gave up the fifth most, Forest went into the offseason with lots of room for improvement. While its most expensive signing, winger Elliot Anderson from Newcastle, has been merely good, the loanees James Ward-Prowse and left back Àlex Moreno made their debuts on Saturday, and made an immediate impact. Both players were among the standouts against Liverpool, with the former relieving pressure on the rare occasions Forest got the ball, and the latter making seven tackles en route to shutting Mohamed Salah out for the first time this season.
Further up the field, Forest can now deploy an impressive attack capable of beating a team of Liverpool's quality. This, more than anything, is why the Trees survived a shaky first half—credit here to goalie Matz Sels, who had a couple of stunning saves to keep the match scoreless into the break—and secured the upset. The trio of Morgan Gibbs-White and Saturday substitutes Callum Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga (average age: 23 years old) gives Forest enough attacking dynamism and shooting fearlessness to allow the side to strike fast and seemingly out of nothing.
On Saturday, it was Hudson-Odoi who struck with lightning speed. The former Chelsea winger, who had broken out as a teenager but had lost momentum in the years since, and who had been accused of rape in May of 2020 (police decided to not pursue any action against Hudson-Odoi a month later), made his way to Forest last season. He scored eight goals in 29 appearances for the Trees, and helped fuel the one thing Forest could be counted on to deliver: powerful counter-attacks.
In the 72nd minute, the 23-year-old Hudson-Odoi showed that his talent still lives. A cross-field ball from Elanga set him up for a one-on-one against fellow substitute Conor Bradley. Hudson-Odoi kept the ball close for a second before hitting two leading touches that set him up for a right-footed curler to the far post that left Alisson in a rare position of helplessness:
The 1-0 win saw Forest rise to seventh in the table after four games, still undefeated following draws against Wolves and Bournemouth, and a 1-0 win over Southampton. Aside from Liverpool, those aren't the toughest of opponents, but there's been enough encouraging signs to say that Forest, at the very least, isn't as futile as it was last season. The Trees are seventh in the league in expected goals, which, though four games is a small sample, is actually an underperformance (6.11 xG versus four total goals scored). On the other side of the field, Forest is over-performing its xG allowed by a similar margin, so even if those two stats get closer to what would be expected, that still puts Forest in the net positive, without any statistical outliers fueling its start.
Credit here must go to beleaguered manager Nuno Espírito Santo. Despite living on the hot seat since his appointment in December of 2023, the Portuguese boss kept Forest up and now has his charges playing effective, if not the most attractive, soccer. For a relegation candidate entering the season, effectiveness is plenty good enough.
The schedule ahead gets tougher, and quickly. Its next four matches are against Brighton, Fulham, Chelsea, and Crystal Palace, all sides with talent to finish mid-table or higher. However, Forest is currently above all of them on the table, and if it comes out of those four matches with something like four or five points, it will be almost as impressive as its win against Liverpool.
Even if Forest's hot start cools, the improvements made to the side, as well as the continued growth and chemistry between its three young attackers, should make the club more fun to watch, and more dangerous to play against. I didn't even mention New Zealand and Forest mainstay Chris Wood, who has two goals already this season at the forward spot. He's more limited than his attacking cohorts, but he provides steady goal-scoring in the middle when shots like Hudson-Odoi's screamer aren't going in. The center back duo of Murillo and new signing Nikola Milenkovic have yet to put a foot wrong, and right back Ola Aina has been among the best players in the side.
There's plenty of talent here, in other words, and Espírito Santo has them playing better as a cohesive unit in defense, his signature pragmatism setting the stage for a more individualized attack. Whether Forest can keep up its pace at a reasonable level—finishing near the middle of the table would be a huge success—or not, the pieces are there to stay above the relegation fray; the teams below Forest in the pecking order have been dire this season in ways that the Trees have not. It's why a win at Liverpool, so long awaited, is both an incredible achievement on its own and a continuation of Forest's uptick in form to start the season. The latter is more important than any three points, and this side could channel something special in its quest to become a regular fixture in the top flight.
