Can Nottingham Forest and Chris Wood maintain their good start to the season?

• Nottingham Forest sit in sixth place in the Premier League, ahead of teams including Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.
• Last time out, they beat Ipswich Town 1-0.
• Striker Chris Wood has scored nine goals in 13 matches. 

Nottingham Forest hadn’t exactly been pulling up trees in their first two seasons back in the Premier League since the 1998-99 season, finishing 16th and 17th respectively. Last time out, they only secured survival on the final day of the season, finishing with just 32 points.

But this time around, in Nuno Espirito Santo’s first full season in charge, things are different. If the season was to end now, they’d finish in sixth place, just one point behind reigning champions Manchester City and 13 points away from relegation. 

In the past, we’ve seen plenty of instances of teams starting the season well, confounding expectations, and gradually falling away. Are Forest destined to follow suit?

It helps that they have a fairly big squad, with cover in case of injury, while Nuno having the chance to enjoy a pre-season with his team will have done no harm at all. Even when they had a couple of defeats in a row last month, at home to Newcastle United and away to Arsenal, they were able to bounce back with a win against a competitive Ipswich Town. 

Striker Wood in the form of his life 

Likewise, striker Chris Wood has started his eighth consecutive top-flight campaign in impressive fashion, scoring nine goals in just 13 games. Last season, his joint-best in the Premier League, he scored 14, and he’d fancy his chances of surpassing this. 33 at the weekend, the New Zealand international has been a Premier League staple for Burnley, Newcastle, and now Forest, but he’s never been hugely prolific.  

He averaged over a goal every three games for Burnley, a decent record for a team who often struggled during their time in the Premier League, and while the £25 million he was sold to Newcastle for might have felt excessive, the Magpies were able to weaken a relegation rival at the same time. Newcastle stayed up, albeit with just two goals from Wood, and Burnley went down. 

Wood first moved to Forest on loan in January 2023, before he joined permanently that June for a fee of £15 million. Last season, he was the team’s top scorer with 15 goals in all competitions, most notably scoring a hat-trick against Newcastle and becoming just the fourth player to put three goals past their former club in a single game in Premier League history. 

It seemed for some time that Wood was destined to be one of those players who are too good for the Championship yet not good enough for the Premier League, and then even when he proved himself in the top flight nobody surely expected a start to the season like this.  

Forest had attempted to find a new forward to challenge Wood over the summer, with pursuits of Arsenal’s Eddie Nketiah, now at Crystal Palace, Feyenoord’s Santiago Gimenez and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Omar Marmoush unsuccessful. That’s not been a problem, however – and that’s in a large part down to Wood. 

A team effort

But he’s not the only one for us to be impressed with. Forest have built a reputation in recent years for intense squad turnover, and while this summer didn’t see quite as much change as some transfer windows since promotion, there were still plenty of changes. Midfielder Elliott Anderson from Newcastle was one of the most eye-catching signings, along with centre-back Nikola Milenković from Fiorentina. James Ward-Prowse is a great loan signing from West Ham United, while many of the players who’ve been at the club for a little longer, like Matz Sels, Murillo and Callum Hudson-Odoi, are playing well.  

A lot of the praise has to go to Nuno, too. He doesn’t adhere to the current tactical trends, with less pressing high up the pitch and the team in no rush to win the ball back quickly. Forest are one of the teams in the league who allow their opponent to enter their defensive third the most, but are near the bottom of the table of chances conceded.  

He plays with Wood, often considered an old-fashioned centre-forward, and his team get the goals in without conceding too many. They haven’t scored as many goals as the teams around them, but when they do score, they make it count. 

If you aren’t one of the teams considered to be in the ‘Big Six’, finishing high up the Premier League is difficult. Even those in the big six can struggle, as we’ve seen from Manchester United and Chelsea in recent seasons.  

So, it might be a big ask for Forest to continue on this trajectory throughout the season, particularly with a busy December and games against some top teams. Any mid-table or bottom-half team doing well for themselves will be compared to Leicester City after their Premier League win in 2015-16, but it would be an achievement just for them to finish in the top half. Most fans, surely, would be happy with a mid-table finish and no relegation worries. But whether this lasts or not, it’s enjoyable for everyone connected with the club.

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