Brentford 2-1 Nottingham Forest (Toney 82′, Dasilva 90+4’| Danilo 45+1′)
GTECH COMMUNITY STADIUM — Maybe, as their away support sang in the west London sun, Nottingham Forest are magic. In just 10 minutes, they made three points disappear and sawed their chances of Premier League survival in half, bamboozled by Ivan Toney’s great sleight of foot.
But of course, as we all know, magic isn’t real. Creating the illusion you can bend the outer realms of the possible takes time and effort and great skill, a guile and gall clearly lacking among Steve Cooper’s cohort.
Toney, a man who increasingly looks to answer the question “what if Didier Drogba were English?”, became the first Brentford player since David McCulloch in the 1930s to score 20 top-flight goals.
His equaliser, a seemingly innocuous free-kick struck low and hard, took advantage of the visitors’ lack of foresight and Keylor Navas’s flimsy wrists. They expected him to do one thing, so he did another. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey in “The Wolf of Wall Street”, it was a fugayzi, a fugazi, a whazy, a whoozie, and now Forest’s chances of survival are fairy dust.
This was another case of the Midlanders working hard, while the Bees worked smart.
As the home fans watched the visiting support drain away to the tune of Gala’s “Desire”, it was almost as though they were asking: Why sign 30 players and hope a few come good, when you can just sign six of the right guys?
Why hire and fire staff like you’re hosting The Apprentice, when only consistency really allows you to execute a vision? Why chase and press and harry all afternoon, when you can just pass it around on a delightful spring afternoon and make killing a game look oh-so-easy?
And yet, for a fleeting moment, it appeared Forest had begun to grasp some consistency from the swirling chaos. Eight players had started all three of their games in the past week, with most of the changes enforced by injury. Danilo, Morgan Gibbs-White, Brennan Johnson and Taiwo Awoniyi were starting to develop cohesive interplay as a forward line, protected by the excellent Orel Mangala.
But as the game went on, the wafer-thin veneer began to crack, the terrifying delicate balance of peace broke apart. Andre Ayew replaced Awoniyi, before Brennan Johnson hobbled off on 66 minutes.
Forest only managed one more shot all game. Danilo, who Cooper named as the one player he thought he didn’t have to worry about, was forced off without being replaced as normal time fizzled out. The 10 remaining men had run a yard too far, their legs not quite able to stop Josh Dasilva’s left-footed curler.
This was always supposed to be the great challenge for Cooper’s side, and the premonitions have transpired to be true. Finding eight players who can start three games in a week should not be an achievement, but it is at the City Ground.
After the game, Cooper called Brentford “a set-piece team”. It felt like a veiled insult, feeding into the traditional idea that set pieces aren’t proper goals, that they somehow don’t count in quite the same way as a sumptuous team move. The hosts, who now have 14 set-piece goals in the league this season, are unburdened by a similar snobbery and all the better for it.
For all his good work molding a seemingly unmoldable squad into a side which remain outside the relegation zone, albeit by a point, naivety has plagued Cooper in his first Premier League season. Forest have either not been willing or able to get their hands dirty when they need it most, certainly not without the raucous backing of the City Ground.
To have won just one league game on the road is a sign of a fundamental lack of resilience, of a friability in the face of overwhelming animosity. This was the case once again in west London: when the going got tough, the tough got going, and they weren’t travelling backing to Nottingham this evening,
Thomas Frank’s side are the poster boys for pragmatism. This was their first league win of the season having had more than 50% possession, which is of course both a positive and a negative. Positive: they can win the games that will make sure they’re never at risk of relegation. Negative: if a better side than Forest gives them the ball, they don’t know what to do with it.
There is no doubt that Frank will have a plan to remedy this, but this is not the time to launch Brentford 3.0, to give away his next trick with nothing on the line.
Forest now have nine days until their next game, with bottom side Southampton visiting the City Ground. With Chelsea, Arsenal and Crystal Palace ahead in their final three games, this presents their clearest remaining opportunity to both gain three points and potentially condemn a relegation rival.
It may well be that this was their final real chance of survival, with their competitors predominantly improving when they need to most. It briefly appeared that Cooper may have a particularly fluffy rabbit from his hat, but it had long escaped by the final flourish.
Forest are paying the price for believing in magic a little too hard, for exchanging hard work and faith for smart work and surety. Narratives are wonderful for building stories, not so much for football teams.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/xUWmqdl
Post a Comment