On the 50th anniversary of Brian Clough’s appointment, Nuno Espirito Santo achieved something that even the legendary former Nottingham Forest manager never managed to do.
Clough’s feats — promotion from the second tier, a league title and back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, as well as four League Cup wins — is the kind of story that is never likely to be matched again in football, never mind at the City Ground.
But he never managed six consecutive top flight victories. In fact, no Forest manager had done that since the 1966-67 campaign, when the Beatles had just released Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields and Clough was cutting his managerial teeth with Hartlepools (as they were then known) United.
Until now, that is. A 3-0 victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday meant that Nuno had achieved his own slice of history and offered further proof that something special might just be stirring on the banks of the Trent.
Once again, Forest fans are being offered the chance to dream.
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No other Premier League side, even Liverpool — who many regard as being the champions elect — have managed six straight wins this season.
Prior to kick-off Forest had already won 37 points in 19 games, an improvement of 20 points from their total at that stage last season. Two of the last three teams with a 20-plus point improvement at the halfway stage in consecutive seasons have won the league – Chelsea in 2016-17 and Leicester City in 2015-16.
Getting Nuno to admit that Forest are in a race for the top four, is almost impossible, never mind persuading him to concede that they might be able to forge a challenge for the title.
With an FA Cup clash with Luton Town to come on Saturday, Nuno would not even be lured into looking ahead to the visit of leaders Liverpool next Tuesday, for a fixture that could have huge ramifications in the title race.
That is not a sentence that anyone expected to utter back in August. But if Forest can plunder a seventh consecutive win, they would move within three points of Arne Slot’s side.
Even if a title push does prove to be beyond them, the evidence to support the notion that they could compete for a place in the Champions League, continues to mount, even as Nuno continues to insist, albeit entirely unconvincingly, that he will not even look at the table until the season is over.
Chris Wood scored Nottingham Forest’s second goal (David Rogers/Getty Images)
“Maybe the end of the season I’ll probably take a look (at the table). At the end of the season, I promise you guys I will take a look,” said Nuno in his post-match press conference at Molineux.
Forest sit third in the Premier League, behind Arsenal only on goal difference (level on 40 points each). Of the 70 teams to win 40-plus points from their first 20 games in a Premier League campaign (prior to 2024-25), only four have failed to finish inside the top four at the end of the season.
While Nuno’s priority is clearly to maintain the laser-like focus that has carried his side this far, it is inescapable that the landmark moments keep coming.
They had already equalled their club record winning run of five matches in the Premier League, which they set under Frank Clark in 1995 en route to a third-placed finish, and number six was sealed in the kind of emphatic fashion that is becoming Forest’s hallmark.
Wolves did threaten after Morgan Gibbs-White had silenced his former fans by opening the scoring in the seventh minute (the 16th time in 20 Premier League games that Forest scored the first goal in a Premier League game), but while they spurned the opportunities they created, Forest were ruthless with theirs. Hudson-Odoi notched up another assist as Chris Wood bagged his 12th Premier League goal of the season and Taiwo Awoniyi come off the bench to net his first goal in almost 11 months to set the seal on victory.
Yet one of the most influential figures in Forest’s success was goalkeeper Matz Sels, signed from Strasbourg in February 2024. The Belgian was sixth or seventh on Forest’s list of targets at the time but his importance to this Forest side is growing with each passing week. He was outstanding again, as were Nikola Milenkovic and Murillo — and later on substitute Morato — in front of him.
Matz Sels has been an inspired signing (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
Monday’s game will have been painfully familiar to Wolves fans, who found themselves on the wrong end of the same brand of Nuno ball which had lifted them into Europe under the Portuguese, who delivered consecutive seventh-placed finishes in 2018-19 and 2019-20.
A more satisfied onlooker was surely Thomas Tuchel. The new England manager will have been impressed not just by Gibbs-White, but also winger Callum Hudson-Odoi and midfielder Elliot Anderson. It had been expected that the former Newcastle man would be given more international experience at under-21 level, at this summer’s European Championships. He may be capable of staking a claim for a more senior role.
As for Forest, the Nuno fairy tale rolls on, each passing week bringing another milestone and sparking memories of former glories.
“It means a lot for us because Brian Clough is a legend,” said Nuno, when asked what it meant to win on the anniversary of his appointment. “You can see it all over Nottingham, in our stadium and in our training ground, references to Brian Clough. That can only inspire us.
“But we have to keep on going. Our happiness is based on how the players are working together; this is what makes us really proud and happy.”
Clough and Nuno could hardly be more different as personalities, yet with each win, the Portuguese’s status is growing.
(Top photo: David Rogers/Getty Images)
