Can Nottingham Forest do a Leicester? Throwback title charge evokes magical memories | OneFootball

Over the last week, Arne Slot’s staff have been trying to look for clues for likely situations that no one in the Premier League has yet been able to see coming. That is the moment when Anthony Elanga, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Morgan Gibbs-White get into position to suddenly break. It has confounded the majority of the Premier League this season, given Nottingham Forest have beaten 12 of the competition’s 19 clubs, including Manchester United and Liverpool themselves. There’s been a glorious throwback in the value of the counterattack, one that has come out of nowhere.

You can say the same about a Forest-Liverpool fixture being billed as a title clash for the first time in 46 years. Talk of that 1979 showdown sits alongside the echoes of Leicester City 2015-16, whether Nuno Espirito Santo’s side can cause lightning to strike twice, and how exactly they’re doing it.

Parallels are obvious inside and out, to go with the sense of magic flowing around the City Ground. There’s the football and the unity of the group out of an East Midlands club lacking the wealth of usual challengers, plus the fact that it has been another distorted Premier League season. Many of those more fancied runners have been struggling with the new European calendar, which has been causing a lot of physical issues.

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Forest have won seven games in a row for the first time since 2006 (PA Wire)

Some of the more cutting individuals in the Premier League would even point to how, just like Leicester, the season has been preceded by an FFP/PSR issue. Just as Leicester came to a £3.1m settlement with the EFL over claims of breaches in 2013-14, Forest were last season given a four-point deduction. There is an argument within the competition that the extra expenditure ended up being worth more in the long run than four points, and there are constant comments about how much they’ve spent. Even Slot mentioned how he’d “underestimated” that, if in his disarmingly affable way.

“They have spent more than us in the last three years,” the Liverpool manager said.

When people within the Premier League are asked about Forest, many are at a loss to explain it. They point to Chris Wood’s hot streak as personifying the season. In the same way almost everything the 33-year-old is hitting is going in – or at least, 12 of 34 shots – almost everything looks like it’s falling into place. The unfashionable and unpopular view, uttered by many in the game, is that it’s just “a freak run that will peter out”.

“Everyone is waiting for it to drop off,” in the words of one source. “There’s no magic formula.”

It’s just that everyone said this about Claudio Ranieri’s Foxes, too.

Some of these comments must also be put into the context of a certain antipathy to controversial owner Evangelos Marinakis. Many Forest fans, rightly excited at how high they are after so long away from this level, don’t need anyone else’s words – or even analysis like this article. Some would rather not compare it to a “fairytale” from a regional rival like Leicester, and instead point to the more obvious example of Brian Clough’s period, and how this is actually a rebirth.

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Forest’s recent run recaptures the spirit of their golden age under Brian Clough (Getty)

There are parallels there, especially in recruitment. Even allowing for expenditure, Forest simply shouldn’t be this high. What are the signings of Wood, Elanga and Hudson-Odoi if not classic revivals of discarded or dismissed players in the way Clough managed with Frank Clark or Larry Lloyd? Many of the most unknown but effective purchases have also come in a newly solid defence, in another throwback to Clough.

Forest have the best defensive record in the Premier League due to the impact of goalkeeper Matz Selz, Nikola Milenkovic and – above all – Murillo. If Milenkovic can be compared to Robert Huth in some gloriously old-fashioned defending, the talk around Murillo is reminiscent of N’Golo Kante, in how other Premier League managers laud a seemingly world-class defender that has – yes – come out of nowhere.

That is also where there is more rationale for a trend that everyone is now trying to explain.

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Nuno Espirito Santo has rebuilt his reputation (Getty)

Even freak runs where everything falls into place, after all, still need substantial things to actually fall into place. There still has to be some foundation.

That is what Nuno has fashioned. There is an obvious symbolism, too, in how the manager himself had also been dismissed at the top level after his brief time at Tottenham Hotspur.

That’s another element seemingly coming full circle. In a post-Pep Guardiola world where football’s tactics are so sophisticated, and players talk of an “NFL-isation” in the number of strategies and instructions they have to internalise, Nuno willingly revels in his own tactical simplicity.

His teams sit deep, are willing to wait and frustrate, and then hit you on the break. The centre-halves don’t even need to play it out from the back in the contemporary way.

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Forest beat Liverpool at Anfield earlier this season thanks to Callum Hudson-Odoi’s strike (Getty)

Such an approach can shock opposition teams, especially when most of them prepare for precisely that kind of ball-playing, as well as the need to adapt to various blocks and pressing models. Forest’s players have evidently been recruited to fit that tactical model, with the club’s power structure further honed. Marinakis is very hands-on, and it makes the decision-making process swift. It has also been noted within the game – occasionally with a grudging respect – how Forest now visibly operate in a more measured and calculated manner than the haphazard way they conducted the 2022 summer window. There is a clear plan.

Such descriptions will sound like faint praise but they are not intended as such. Forest offer a badly needed variety, one that involves some vintage history, in a few senses.

Nuno’s entire approach is almost a problem that clubs have forgotten to solve. It is literally revolutionary, or – yes – something they didn’t see coming.

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Striker Chris Wood has been in flying form (Getty)

And yet, that very sense of surprise, and how it can’t be repeated, is what also gives this game against Liverpool even more edge. Forest have now played everyone in the Premier League, which means everyone else knows what they’re about. It was notable that Wolves, who were one of just eight sides they didn’t beat in the first half of the campaign, were last week defeated 3-0.

Those who felt the full force of a Forest counterattack, and especially the energy of Gibbs-White and Elliott Anderson, will be preparing to weather it the second time around.

Slot’s Liverpool, of course, have the exact same issue from beating 14 of 18 teams so far in almost sensational manner, but then Forest were the one team they lost to. It turns this game on its head a little bit. Normally in such fixtures, the more interesting tactical element is what the notional weaker team does to prepare for the better side. This time, Slot’s response to Nuno’s approach is going to be telling.

The same can be said of the result. Forest are now at that point where, like Leicester in 2015-16 or Clough’s side in 1977-78, every match is going to be cast as a new and different test; another examination of how far they can keep this going.

That’s the other thing about freak runs. The strong likelihood is they end abruptly, but they can just continue. A big win propels momentum and confidence. Beating Liverpool for a second time would obviously change perceptions over whether Forest can finish first. People might start to see it.