Nottingham Forest suffer classic ‘only us’ misery as Glasner returns to Crystal Palace
You have to admire the lengths and efforts all four of Sunday’s early teams went to in a futile bid to grab some tiny slice of the wider football public’s bandwidth during what were the two most ‘attention now turns’ Sunday 2pm games since records began.
It’s a particular shame that so few neutrals will have truly registered what happened at Selhurst Park, because Nottingham Forest endured the sort of inexplicable and infuriating afternoon that quite literally every single fan on earth believes only ever befalls their own club.
It was, in short, an absolute corners hit the first man, subs made too late of an afternoon for Forest on what was, in the end, a deeply disappointing return to Selhurst Park for Oliver Glasner, who was taunted with questions regarding the scoreline after Yeremy Pino made it 3-1 on the hour.
Glasner knew the answer. The questions that might have given him more trouble would be the whys and hows of that scoreline.
For 40 minutes, this was the most comically one-sided spectacle. The excellent Dan Ndoye gave Forest an early lead, latching on to a shoddy backpass but firmly in Still Had A Lot To Do before calmly sidefooting past Walter Benitez and into the bottom corner.
In some ways, this was a tone-setter. In others it was absolutely not. The chaotic, incoherent Palace defending would very much remain a feature of the rest of the first half. Calm, composed and clinical Forest finishing would… not.
Everything Forest did for the next 37 minutes before the final touch was glorious. The quick, one-and-two-touch passing leaving Palace’s defenders spinning and seeing stars as the ball fizzed around them. Ndoye, Morgan Gibbs-White and James McAtee were leading Palace a merry dance. Further goals seemed inevitable. Seemed.
They refused to come. A header was tipped over the bar when Gibbs-White had the choice of two entirely unmarked colleagues to pick out at the back post. That was the real tone-setter: Forest sending clear chances pretty much directly at Benitez.
The most egregious of these came when Gibbs-White’s deflected effort from distance came down off the crossbar. Liam Delap then absolutely Liam Delaped the ball straight at Benitez with all his might.
We’ve always argued that old pundit favourites like “You’ve got to hit the target” or “Make sure you work the keeper” are complete b*llocks. The weirdest thing is that they are often particularly popular with high-class former strikers who pointedly did not make a career out of aiming shots directly at the middle of the goal to ensure they “hit the target” or “worked the keeper” but start insisting that they did within seconds of retirement.
You couldn’t ask for clearer examples of how and why good finishers aim for the corners rather than just hammering the ball on target ithan Ndoye’s goal and Delap’s miss. Ndoye’s shot had little venom but pinpoint accuracy. It was unsaveable. Delap’s shot had something approaching the launch velocity of an Apollo rocket, yet Benitez was able to save it without ever really even making a conscious decision to do so.
Astonishing as it was, it was impossible at that time to imagine it might actually matter. Forest were so far on top and Palace so utterly wide-eyed and rattled that the game did appear to be over. Palace weren’t just a mess, they were the same mess time and time again. Gibbs-White managed to find himself unmarked beyond the back post from a corner, and his header back across goal almost produced the second goal.
From the subsequent corner… Palace did exactly the same thing again, once again narrowly avoiding paying a heavier price.
And yet, from nowhere, Palace produced the move of the first half to draw level. After watching Forest’s beguiling patterns produce no end product, Palace unfurled a passing move to outshine the lot. And this time Daichi Kamada could do what Forest couldn’t and find the touch.
Yet no sooner had Forest fans up and down the land concluded their “Typical, it could only happen to us” monologues than it had got even worse as Jefferson Lerma bundled home the messiest of goals from a corner to create the most absurd of half-time scorelines.
The start of the second half produced more of the same, with Forest creating and spurning chances in quick-fire succession. By this point you didn’t have to be a Forest fan to sense what was coming, Pino pouncing on a loose ball to make it 3-1 after Jorgen Strand Larsen’s shot was saved.
At this point, Forest’s players seemed to largely accept the fate football had decided for them, and much of the remainder of the game comprised either Gibbs-White or Ndoye or sometimes both simply shaking their heads in disbelief at it all.
In fairness to Palace, it should be noted that even if they never did truly find any semblance of defensive control, two of their three goals were the result of classy attacking moves.
Their first ever Premier League win over Forest and first home points in Our League for Pierre Sage ended up weirdly deserved. The mystery of just how it got to 3-1 is one thing, but having found themselves in that position they saw the game out pretty safely in the end as Forest wilted.
By the time injury-time rolled around, Glasner went from being asked the score to being informed his employment would be terminated first thing next week.
That’s probably not true, even with Mr Marinakes about. But Forest are one of a few teams – Sunderland and Bournemouth are others – who have, under the radar, had really quite bad starts to the season.
Forest can at least be confident of avoiding detection today of all days, but it’s Arsenal up next. That could easily be picked up by Fear For Them radars and give Marinakis an itchy trigger finger.
