Given that Nottingham Forest became a punchline to some due to the number of signings under Evangelos Marinakis since winning promotion, it might be a surprise to hear that they have used the fewest players of any Premier League club this season.
That continuity has been one of the secrets of Forest’s success and a run that has taken them into the Champions League places with a six-point advantage over reigning champions Manchester City in fifth with just 14 Premier League fixtures left to play.
Five Forest players have started at least 23 of their 24 games in the competition this season. There is their outstanding goalkeeper Matz Sels, the centre-back pairing of Nikola Milenkovic and Murillo, full-back Ola Aina and the team’s top scorer Chris Wood.
No other team have had as many players start so many games in the Premier League this season. Brighton, the team they beat 7-0 on Saturday, have not had one. Nor have bottom club Southampton or perhaps the season’s biggest underachievers Tottenham.
The temptation is to suggest that this is luck. Maybe Nuno Espirito Santo has just been fortunate with injuries and the absence of European commitments to distract Forest. More likely is that this is both a consequence and a benefit of the manager’s approach.
At Wolves back in 2019/20, a season in which his team played no fewer than 17 games in the Europa League, he had 11 players within his squad who made 33 appearances or more in the Premier League as well. They finished seventh for a second successive season.
Speaking to Nuno at the time about this trait in his teams, he saw it as an evolution in his thinking. “I have had big squads,” he said. “I had big squads at Rio Ave, Valencia and Porto. All managers go through a process of learning and trying to find solutions.”
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Highlights from the Premier League match between Nottingham Forest and Brighton
The advantages of a smaller squad are obvious. When Anthony Elanga crosses the ball, he knows that Wood is likely to have pulled away to the far post. When Morgan Gibbs-White picks up the ball, he does not need to look to know where the runners will be.
“More complexities, small societies. That comes from hours and hours on the training ground, hours playing together,” said Nuno in that conversation all those years ago. “It becomes a routine that becomes a habit and your habits become your character.”
Players develop relationships. So far, so normal. But what is fascinating is that it is Nuno’s style of play that facilitates this continuity. The team to cover the least distance in that 2019/20 Premier League season? His Wolves team. And the trend continues.
This season, the team to run the least per game is Nuno’s Forest side. It is not because the players are not trying. This is not about work rate or lethargy. It is about those familiar Nuno watchwords, the desire for his team to remain compact at all times.
Forest’s style is unusual among teams at the top end of the table. Even when putting seven past Brighton last time out, they did so with just 37.4 per cent of the possession. Nuno’s team do not press the opposition to win it back quickly in quite the same way.
No Premier League team allows the opposition to play more passes before making a defensive action than Forest. They are content for the opposition to have possession in areas where they feel they are in control of the situation even without the ball.
The result is that Forest allow their opponents to progress the ball more per passing sequence than anyone else too. As Nuno sees the game, sucking teams forward just means there is more space for his attacking players to run into on the transition.
Of course, there is no right or wrong way to play football and, aside from stylistic preferences, the only thing that really matters is whether it works. But it is reasonable to conclude that while Forest’s approach is mentally taxing, it is not quite so physically demanding.
Interestingly, the team that presses the most, the team that allows the fewest opposition passes per defensive action are Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham. It is an intense style, regarded as the polar opposite to Nuno and initially welcomed by their supporters.
But with Spurs suffering more muscle injuries than any other team in the competition, perhaps there is more to consider than mere aesthetics, more even than the immediate result achieved. If that type of football is harder to sustain, it impacts player availability.
Bournemouth play a similar pressing game and are wildly overachieving themselves, so it can work. But they too have done so despite considerable injuries. The Premier League team with the fewest injuries right now? That would be Nottingham Forest.
There are reasons to believe that Forest’s current form is unsustainable. The bookmakers take the view that they remain odds against to finish in the top four. The expected-goals data would also indicate that there are other teams more likely.
But it would be a mistake to think this is all a coincidence. If Nuno is able to repeatedly get his strongest players out on the pitch again and again, and history would suggest his methods mean he can, then expect his Nottingham Forest team to continue to surprise.
