Stats compared with Leicester’s title season 

©TM/IMAGO

At the start of the 2024/25 season, many people expected Nottingham Forest to be embroiled in yet another relegation battle, and it looked like it could even be the year they faced the drop. Having spent heavily on a plethora of players since being promoted back in 2021, the East Midlands club had a fairly quiet summer transfer window by their own standards. Forest still spent €105.4 million on new signings, with Elliot Anderson’s €41.2m arrival from Newcastle the most lucrative purchase. However, we are now at the business end of the season, and what is being achieved by Nuno Espírito Santo’s team at the City Ground is nothing short of sensational.

Forest’s 1-0 win over struggling Manchester United on Tuesday night means they are now soldily in third, 10 points clear of sixth-place Newcastle, with the top-five set to get Champions League football next season. The East Midlands club now look somewhat of a shoe-in to qualify for Europe’s top competition. Forest have 57 points from their opening 30 matches, and have already beaten Liverpool at Anfield this season. They have also defeated Manchester United twice, Manchester City and Tottenham in the Premier League this season. They are now within touching distance of achieving something very special. 

Can Nottingham Forest really get top four this season?

As illustrated in the graphic above, Forest have not only surpassed what they had achieved at this stage of a Premier League season since being promoted, they have completely eclipsed it. In fact the 57 points they have already accumulated is way more than their entire points tally of 32 last season, and the 38 points they finished with in the 2022/23 campaign. So how has Espírito Santo taken Forest from relegation-threatened to top-four challengers?

It starts with a solid foundation. Forest have been defensively superb this season. Only Arsenal (25) and Liverpool (27) have conceded fewer goals than Forest’s 35 in the entire Premier League, and no team has more clean sheets than Forest’s 13. This defensive rigidity has been built upon the centre-back partnership of Murillo and Nikola Milenković. The latter was signed for just €12.3m from Fiorentina and has without doubt proved to be one of the signings of the summer thus far. A giant, dominant central defender, the Serbian complements the front-footed Murillo wonderfully, and they have formed one of the best partnerships in the division.

At the other end of the pitch, Kiwi striker Chris Wood has been rolling back the years and hit the form of his life at 33 years old. The New Zealander has scored 18 goals in 29 Premier League games, and has been a key focal point to Forest’s quick transitions, providing a central threat to allow the likes of Anthony Elanga, Morgan Gibbs-White and Callum Hudson-Odoi to play off. And of that aforementioned trio, Gibbs-White has really taken his game to another level this season, and is the now the star man in this Forest team, and likely to be a regular in the England set up.

So with a solid defence, a potent goalscorer, a sprinkle of stardust from Gibbs-White, and a whole host of quick, hungry wingers, what are the limits on what this Forest side can achieve? If we look back to the 2015/16 season, and the miracle of Leicester City, in which the Foxes stunned the status quo to win the Premier League title as 5000/1 shots, there are some startling similarities between Claudio Ranieri’s team that season and Forest this term. What Leicester did in 2016 was special, and is unlikely to ever be repeated, but as highlighted in the graphic above, Forest are now actually only six points short of Leicester’s points tally at this stag of the season. They also have scored more goals, and have conceded fewer.

Nobody is expecting Forest to repeat Leicester’s heroics and win the Premier League this season, but it puts into perspective just what is happening at the City Ground right now. Perhaps if they were lucky enough to be around in that 15/16 season they could also have got close to emulating Leicester’s miracle. In reality, even if Forest had managed to get European football of any notion for next season through their league position this term, it would be some achievement. One would expect at some point Espirito Santo’s side to drop-off, but up until now they are not going away. Almost 10 years on from Leicester’s phenomenon, could we be seeing another mind-boggling feat from another East Midlands side?