Can Nottingham Forest do a Leicester? Throwback title charge evokes magical memories
Share:
For the first time since 1979, Nottingham Forest’s encounter with Liverpool is being billed as a title clash – but can Nuno Espirito Santo’s side keep their remarkable run going?. 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.
![[Forest have won seven games in a row for the first time since 2006]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/11/17/7b2c2990f8fed25c9eda0886d9ca510fY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM2Njk5ODQ3-2.78662165.jpg)
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.
![[Forest’s recent run recaptures the spirit of their golden age under Brian Clough]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/13/19/newFile-4.jpg)
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.
![[Nuno Espirito Santo has rebuilt his reputation]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/03/16/GettyImages-2167181983.jpg)
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.
![[Forest beat Liverpool at Anfield earlier this season thanks to Callum Hudson-Odoi’s strike]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/13/12/GettyImages-2171976131.jpg)
