Nottingham Forest held Liverpool to a 1-1 draw at The City Ground in a clash between the Premier League title contenders.
The hosts took an early lead through Chris Wood, the striker finishing of a typical, rapid counterattack. Liverpool, for their part, couldn’t muster a shot on target until the 66th minute.
When that shot came, it hit the net; just introduced, Diogo Jota nodded home from a Kostas Tsimikas corner, the pair of substitutes each contributing to the equaliser with their first touches.
From then on out, they were well on top. Their first shot on target was the equaliser; by fulltime, they’d hit seven – but Matz Sels and the Forest defence just about held on to a more than valuable point.
As it happened
Who’d have guessed this? In the month of January, the first real clash of the title contenders was played out at The City Ground. Liverpool, despite having slowed down with only one win in their previous three, were still six points clear at the top of the Premier League with a game in hand. The only side to beat them in the competition? Nuno Espirito Santo’s Nottingham Forest. History couldn’t repeat itself, could it?
Why not? Second in the league, they themselves had won seven games on the trot and looked good value for those wins, too. If they scored quickly here, they could well have made it eight. And they did.
Liverpool had all the ball for seven minutes. Forest sat, absorbed, waited for their moment – and not many do that better than them. Com the eighth minute, they won the ball back on the halfway line. Murillo sprayed the ball forwards to Anthony Elanga, who had one plan in mind: find Wood.
One pass later, the Kiwi was in on goal, and you know the rest. He rolled the ball past Alisson, his attempts to spread himself futile. Forest were in front, against all odds, well and truly in the title race.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe visitors needed to respond and floundered at every opportunity. Crossing was the order of the day, and delivery after delivery was cleared away from danger. Nikola Milenković had his work cut out for him but relished it; of Liverpool’s 13 first half crosses, only one found its target, with Dominik Szoboszlai unable to trouble Matz Sels.
Come halftime, they’d had nine shots. Not one was on target.
All the while, Forest played their game, but not event hey could trouble the opposing keeper with any regularity. After their goal, only Callum Hudson-Odoi would force a shot on goal – and that came in the 14th minute. The first half was a cagey, nervy affair. Things would have to change in the second for more goals to come – and those changes came in one fowl swoop.
On 66 minutes, only one decent effort between the two in the half thus far, Arne Slot rolled the dice. Ibrahima Konaté and Andy Robertson made way, Kostas Tsimikas and Diogo Jota entering the fray. Liverpool had a corner to take, the former standing over it and the latter waiting in the middle.
First touch. Tsimikas crossed into the box. Sels leapt and misjudged; the ball flew into the six-yard box. Second touch. Jota wriggled away from his marker, the goal gaping, to head home the equaliser. The dice roll turned out to be a masterstroke; Liverpool were level, two touches between their two substitutes the difference.
Embed from Getty ImagesThey were alive. Jota might’ve had a hat-trick by the 77th minute, Sels this time intervening to deny only their second and third shots on target. Nottingham Forest were holding on by a thread, Liverpool electing to come breathe life into their performance only in the last half-hour.
Szoboszlai might’ve scored in the 82nd minute with a thumping strike; Mohamed Salah was denied first by Sels, then by Ola Aina on the line and then by his own poor accuracy within the space of a minute. They weren’t knocking, but hammering the door.
Cody Gakpo finally tested Sels in added time too, a shot from distance hit low, hard, and incredibly parried by the goalkeeper. It felt like a matter of time – but it wasn’t. Nottingham Forest had done enough, a point in the title race and an unbeaten season against Liverpool secured.
For an hour, Slot’s Reds looked blunt. One substitution changed everything, but despite 30 minutes of sustained pressure, there was only only one man to come out on top: Matz Sels.
It’s down to him, then, that his side secured their most valuable draw of the season. They stay within six points of the league leaders, still in sight of a most unthinkable title. This season remains the gift that keeps on giving – and nowhere is that that more true than by the River Trent.
The lineups
NFO: Sels; Williams, Murillo, Milenković, Aina; Anderson, Yates; Hudson-Odoi, Gibbs-White, Elanga; Wood
LIV: Alisson; Robertson, Van Dijk, Konaté, Alexander-Arnold; Mac Allister, Gravenberch; Gakpo, Szoboszlai, Salah; Díaz
FEATURED IMAGE: Tom McAtee