It should be the best of times for Nottingham Forest, but the great expectations of securing an historic Champions League place risk making it the worst if they miss out. A Murillo mistake gave Everton victory in stoppage time as the pressure started to show on Forest.
The Brazil centre-back lost the ball just inside the Everton half, allowing Dwight McNeil to breakaway and slip in Abdoulaye Doucouré to finish the job in the 94th minute. The visitors deserved the win against a side who did not live up to their lofty position of third place.
In many ways, it was surprising it took Everton, who have lost twice in 13 Premier League games under David Moyes, so long to find a goal. They had dominated from the early stages and offered little to Forest in return. Neither Forest nor Everton are used to enjoying the majority of possession, making an intriguing spectacle when such sides meet. The hosts stuck to their usual plan of foregoing use of the ball, waiting to play on the counter, but rarely threatened.
“Disappointed with the performance,” Nuno Espírito Santo said. “We were not comfortable, we didn’t play good. The game didn’t flow, everything created a lot of problems to us. They win the duels, second balls, they keep putting us under pressure. In terms of offensive game, we didn’t create too much.”
There is an expectation inside and outside Nottingham that Champions League football will come here next season. Such grandiose ambitions have brought tension to the run-in as nerves jangle at the prospect of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich rocking up.
The former Arsenal sporting director Edu was in the directors’ box as he is set to take up a role in Evangelos Marinakis’s multi-club group. That shows the growing ambition, but there is little experience on the pitch of battles for Europe.
Everton created a few half-chances that Iliman Ndiaye failed to threaten Matz Sels with as the opening half-hour passed without major incident, bar the odd foul or two. After the break, the Senegal forward got the wrong side of Neco Williams, allowing a one-on-one chance with Sels but the goalkeeper held firm.
Forest were boosted by the return of Chris Wood from injury, giving them a focal point in attack they lacked in last Saturdays defeat by Aston Villa, although he did not look fully fit and did not have a chance to add to his 18 goals. As a team chasing Champions League football against one whose season is effectively over, it felt like Forest should be offering greater impetus, but failed to do so.
Nuno’s potential solution was to send Anthony Elanga on for Jota Silva close to the hour mark. It lifted the mood of the crowd whose only vague excitement before that were two Callum Hudson-Odoi shots easily saved by Jordan Pickford.
If one team was to get an opener, it seemed it would be Everton who looked dangerous from set pieces, but Forest had previously kept four clean sheets in four home games. Doucouré had a chance at the back post, but that was blocked by a diving Williams.
Doucouré made no mistake next time as he kept his cool to beat Sels when through on goal, showing everyone inside the ground how to stay calm in a tense situation and inflict a first home defeat on the FA Cup semi-finalists since mid-November.
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“We’re challenging some of the best teams in the league at the moment, which is a great sign for me,” Moyes said. “If we could have a season like Nottingham Forest are having this year, next year, then I’d be hugely thrilled to be in among the Champions League teams, semi-final of the Cup.”
Forest prefer to be underdogs, but they are in pole position and they need to cope with the pressure that comes with it. They will need to learn from this quickly or face seeing their dream vanish.
“It’s in our hands,” Nuno said. “But nobody is going to give us nothing, we have to do it by ourselves. It’s up to us to improve and compete much better like we did before.”
