Nottingham Forest 1-0 Arsenal (Grabban 83′)
Liverpool had fallen behind, but won. Tottenham had fallen behind, but won. A much-changed West Ham beat a much-changed Leeds United and not even their own supporters could offer persuasive evidence for why it had been televised.
And so it fell to Nottingham Forest to deliver the shock of FA Cup Sunday. You better believe they delivered. For the second time in four years, Arsenal were felled on the banks of the Trent.
For much of Sunday afternoon, the FA Cup third round was twiddling and meandering towards a close. This fixture produced a strange atmosphere, certainly not low-key but perhaps a little more carefree. Football is clearly at its best as an experience – although it might not always feel it at the time – when it matters most. But there is value in watching your team play when you care about the match’s destiny but your mood for the next three days will not be defined by it.
At least some of the anticipation for Sunday’s tie was dampened, or at least partly diluted by the familiarity that can easily breed contempt. This was the fourth cup meeting between Arsenal and Nottingham Forest since August 2016.
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But it only takes one break. With Arsenal enjoying what they assumed was safe possession in their own half, recovering after two recent Forest chances, Brennan Johnson robbed the ball back and played Ryan Yates down the right. It isn’t supposed to be this way, you understand. Yates is the midfield ball winner, the destroyer of this team who flexes his muscles to the Trent End after a win. Johnson is the speedy wide attacker, son of former Forest favourite David who is attracting serious interest from the top-flight.
But both are academy graduates, and that is important. For so long, as this always famous but once successful club fell into stasis or decline or both, the seam of academy graduates that peppered the starting XIs were the only thing to cling to. Gary Brazil, its head, merits the freedom of the city for his work in maintaining standards and maintaining hope.
Yates was not quite in nosebleed territory, but he trod unfamiliar ground. You would not have known it from the curl and pace on his cross, played across the face of Arsenal’s penalty area. There are more prolific, more speedy strikers in the Championship, but few have the movement of Lewis Grabban. Forest may have recruited a backup in Keinan Davis, but Grabban is still No 1 for a reason.
If Grabban was the matchwinner, Djed Spence was the star. Spence has been the subject of some hoopla over the last few weeks. On loan from Middlesbrough, Chris Wilder threatened that he would have to recall his full-back when the EFL refused to postpone a league fixture for Covid-19 absentees. In the end, the game was called off and Spence stayed put. Few Forest fans will have received better Christmas presents.
Spence will surely play in the Premier League next season, with or without Forest and Middlesbrough. He made one surging run, 20 minutes before the end when every other player appeared to be halfway to exhaustion, that took three Arsenal players out of the game before Gabriel Martinelli scythed him down.
Much of the focus will and should be on Arsenal. Mikel Arteta picked a stronger team than most considered likely, given their rearranged EFL Cup semi-final first leg against Liverpool on Thursday and a north London derby next weekend. With Emile Smith-Rowe and Granit Xhaka nursing slight injuries and five players at Afcon, Arteta probably reasoned that he had little choice.
But personnel will always be overshadowed by application when it is so painfully lacking. Arsenal appeared to assume that simply having possession of the ball would cause clear cut chances to magically present themselves. Instead, they remained toothless almost throughout, failing to have a shot on target and barely moving out of second gear even after conceding. Classic Arsenal, the away end will reason: two steps forward and two more back.
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This was Forest’s day; goodness knows they have waited long enough for them over the last two decades. The FA Cup doesn’t matter as an end result; they are unlikely to play at the new Wembley for the first time in this competition.
But of course, it matters as an isolated, joyful experience and as a line in the sand for where Steve Cooper has taken this club so quickly. The crucial question for every Forest manager is whether they can drag the club up before the club drags them down. Cooper offers more evidence than most have that they might, finally, have a long-term answer. Games like these do not decide seasons; they do define moods.
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