Tottenham 1-2 Nottingham Forest: Premier League – live reaction
Key events
PSA: John Higgins and Joe O’Connor are playing an epic at the Crucible. If you’re near a telly, I urge you to get it on.
The league table:
What a win for Forest! Next for them it’s Manchester City at Wembley in the FA Cup semi – imagine the buzz their players, staff and fans are on – and in winning tonight they’ve sent a message to your Villas, Newcastles, Citys and Chelseas of this world. A friendly run-in says they’ve a really good chance of seeing it out to make the Champions League.
FULL TIME: Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Nottingham Forest
A monumental win for forest, who move back into third place; Spurs stay 16th.
90+6 min Forest are nearly there, Sosa pulling wide and instead of going to the corner, looking to clip over towards Awoniyi. It doesn’t work out, but Awoniyi then wins a free-kick by the touchline, right it front of the away fans, noising them up as if they needed such, and that is surely it.
90+4 min Johnson, the former Forest man, collects a pass on the run, skipping inside Toffolo, who fouls him and is booked. free-kick Spurs, out on the right, 30 yards from goal … and someone, I don’t see who, heads clear then, when it comes back, williams humps forward for Awoniyi.
90+3 min Change for forest, Sosa replacing Gibbs-White.
90+2 min Sels takes ages over a goalkick and is booked. He’s been good tonight; so have his teammates, who arrived in London under pressure to rebound after a potentially damaging defeat last time out. With Forest’s best season in 30 years at stake, they’ve done superbly to keep the head and produce enough quality to lead at this stage.
90+1 min Milenkovic goes down with apparent cramp, but is soon back to his feet.
90 min We’ll have five additional minutes.
90 min Begvall, on for Sarr – apologies, I didn’t get to noting it – gets away, is hauled down by Yates, and that’s a yellow card.
88 min Credit to Richarlison, who’s toiled tonight without losing hope or confidence. His last header was pretty good, requiring a really good save to keep it out, and the one that scored was superb.
GOAL1 Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Nottingham Forest (Richarlison 87)
Livener! Spurs win a free-kick and shove it wide, Porro curling in another fine cross, again Richarlison rises, and this time he guides a terrific header down and across Sels, into the far corner. These last few minutes will be intense!
85 min “Remember this line from Colin Farrell in In Bruges,” asks Rob Coughlin. “You weren’t really shit, but you weren’t all that great either. Like Tottenham.” Does this even apply anymore?”
Did it ever?
84 min My SkyGo crashes, returning just in time for me to see Spence shanking a shot somewhere towards Selhurst Park.
82 min On which point, what a season Sels has had. Matt Turner wasn’t quite good enough, but even so, the extent of the upgrade is unusual.
81 min What a save Matz Sels! Porro tosses in a cross and Richarlison is up again, heading down … but Sels does brilliantly to wait for it to bounce before flicking it away. Had he tried to get a hand to it when it hit the ground, it would’ve beaten him.
79 min “I’m guessing here,” admits Peter Crosby, “but I have wondered for some time whether Ange and his staff have a communication issue. I’m a Spurs fan and watching from afar, I’ve been struck all season by just how many subs are made at half-time. That feels wrong – it happens almost every game, and it strikes me as a corrective act rather than a progressive one. The message it must send to the players (I’m thinking Maddison more than most) is so negative. It often feels like desperation rather than controlled. Nuno and Forest are a great example of how it should be working – so the fact that it doesn’t with Spurs has got to be a management issue.”
I don’t think the players are great, but Postecoglou’s Spurs remind me a bit of Ten Hag’s United: good enough to beat the beast on a good day, but the manager couldn’t find a corrective when the system that worked fine with the best, richest team in a weaker league turned out to be unsuitable for the Prem.
77 min This has been one of Tel’s better games for Spurs – he’s looked more likely than most to make something happen, without looking remotely likely to make something happen. He might be good in a good team, but he’s not good enough to elevate a poor one.
75 min Johnson tosses a hopeful cross miles from anywhere, then Forest make another changes, Awoniyi for Wood – who now has 18 goals for the season.
74 min Forest are so good at keeping their opponents attacks in front of them. Nuno and his coaches have done such a good job of getting the team to buy into, then drill the plan.
72 min Again, Forest allow Danso to have the ball, so he mooches a little closer to goal, then lashes a shot back the way he came … which scuttles just wide of the post.
71 min Here come Spurs again, Spence attacking the outside of Williams, who doesn’t have the pace or physicality to cope, but just about manages to get back ceding a corner … which comes to nowt.
70 min Wood bursts away from Sarr on halfway and with no Van de Ven on the pitch tries to stick it in behind Davies and run him, but the defender gets in the way easily enough.
68 min Two more changes for Spurs: off go Odobert and Kulusevski, on come Solanke and Johnson.
67 min Sels saves Forest! A clearance hits Yates on the back and diverts the ball into the box, right to Richarlison! But he’s maybe a little late to react, the keeper leaps at him, and wears the driven shot on the midriff. That’s a bit of a sair yin, but he’ll be fine.
65 min Gibbs-White’s touch is off, he lunges at Porro looking to retrieve the situation, and lands studs on ankle. He’s booked.
63 min Oh my days! Porro’s corner goes near post, Kulusevski is up to glance a header headed for the far side-netting … until, out of nowhere, Toffolo – facing his own goal – extends a go-go Gadget leg to hook away from under his own bar! That is sensational defending.
62 min If Postecoglou wants to get something out of this game he surely has to bring on Maddison? Though I’m not certain there’s a player whose conception of how good he is further away from how good he is, he’s still a decent player able to find space in tight areas. Anyroad, Spurs have a corner down the right…
60 min “Hasan’s problems would be solved, in many ways, by Forest winning a third European Cup,” reckons Simon McGrother.
58 min Two more changes for Forest: off go Danilo and Dominguez, on come Yates and Hudson-Odoi – who we thought might affect the game in the last half-hour or so.
57 min “Can’t agree with you about all except Spurs supporters siding with Forest,” says Richard Hirst. “I still have this nagging feeling that Forest got away with one when they went on their supermarket sweep; I can’t believe they weren’t relegated. For them to qualify for the Champions League seems inappropriate.”
Oh I didn’t say people would be siding with Forest, just laughing at Spurs given the extent to which the game has gone as they’d have planned it to. I agree that theirs is not a simple story of footballing romance – likewise that of Bournemouth and Brighton – but these days, it’s hard to do much better.
55 min And here comes the Forest counter! A long punt clear is flicked on by Gibbs-White, who spins and continues his run, Wood cushioning a lovely volleyed return into his stride, the near side of the goal opening up for him. But from the edge, his firm pass towards it zips a yard or two wide. That’s by far the best chance of the half so far.
54 min Now it’s Porro on the attack and Sarr again box-crashes – he must’ve been given the order – but the ball arrives at an awkward angle and all he can do is flick it over his own head to no one.
53 min So far this half, it’s been all Spurs, but Forest are comfortable.
51 min Better from Spurs, Danso offered space so feeding into the box, where Sarr’s first touch takes him into space and away from Milenkovic, who grabs a handful of shirt on the ref’s blind side, and does enough to hold his man up – though there was also too much on the control.
50 min We’re back into it at Stockley Park, the fire alarm resolved and VAR back working … or not.
49 min “As a middle-aged man – not the most elusive demographic in MBMland, I’m guessing,” begins Hasan, “I can calculate that I spent roughly the first quarter of my life scribbling the Forest crest on to any spare patch of paper I could find …a nd not once did I think I was drawing Elmo. Now, after tonight,it remains to be seen how much of the rest of my life on this mortal coil will be spent trying to unsee Elmo every time I look at it. So I just wanted to say thank you for that, really.”
On the plus side, you can now also draw one of the great Muppets.
