I have a real sense of gnawing frustration this morning.

I watched the United/City game, and I just assumed United would be pants and City cut our lead, not the other way around, so by the time kick off came for our game, I was buzzing.

There’s nothing like a Sean Dyche mid-block slog-fest to quell any excitement, though, eh?

Let’s do some real talk here, though, because I don’t blame or accuse Forest of anything in terms of the game. They are sitting in 17th, they need to pick up points, so having the visitorsto their gaff who are currently top of the league right now was always going to mean they would have to grind something out. So in no way do I mean my Sean Dyche comments as a slight on them. But we’ve seen him do this to us before, and we really should be able to have an answer for it.

When I say “do this before,” I mean Everton at home last season, in which Everton kept their shape, kept their discipline, said to Arsenal, “go on then, see if you can break us down,” and we had no answer that day.

And it appears we had no answer yesterday, although I think that is more on us, than it is on Forest. Because you look at all the data points, you look at the eye test on some of the chances we missed, and this was a 1-0 / 2-0 game in which we were once again profligate on goal.

  • Martinelli missed an open goal
  • Zubimendi puts wide with a half-cross, half-shot
  • Gyokeres put in behind, and Murillo blocks
  • Rice hits a shot into the tur,f and Sels palms it wide
  • Sels makes a wonder save from a Saka looping header
  • Merino heads a Rice ball into the box just wide

By the end of the game, depending on which statistical model you use, we’d created enough xG to bury two chances. But we come away with a big, fat, zero, and I have to look at our attacking display and say it feels like it was just all wrong yesterday. I said pre-game on social media that I didn’t think that Martinelli is quite the right choice for what I suspected Forest under Sean Dyche would do. Here are my words in the morning on the blog:

Martinelli is fresh off a hat-trick last weekend, so he might be a good option, but if Forest sit in a compact shape when we have the ball, Martinelli might be reduced to that kind of game we all dread for him: hugging the touchline, no space to run in behind, touch-touch-touch-byline-cross to nowhere.

As it was, he wasn’t reduced to hugging the touchline, but he didn’t have a great game, wasn’t involved much at all, and when his big moment came to make himself a match-winner, he fluffed his lines at the back post. It was really poor from a guy who is our top scorer this season. But herein lies the problem; Martinelli, as our top scorer, shows that sometimes, we just lack that clinical finish in front of goal. Games like yesterday showed this. We score goals, we all know we do, and we’re one of the top scorers in the Premier League, but games like yesterday are where you go from being in a title race to shutting down a title race. Last season, Liverpool had the likes of Salah, who would just bag in a game like this. Haaland tends to do that too, and that’s also why City won the league two seasons ago. We’re in great shape, we’re seven points clear (although that will be reduced to four today with Villa sure to beat a pretty average Everton side on their own turf), but if we had a monster in front of goal, I think that lead would be so unassailable, that we’d all be wondering what we were going to be wearing to the victory parade in May – even by now.

As it is, because of games like this, as well as the failure to capitalise and frankly, just be better in that second half against Liverpool, we find ourselves seven points clear and not able to really pull away from the chasing pack.

There is, of course, some introspection needed. We ARE seven points clear. But it just doesn’t ‘feel’ to me like we’re acting like champions-elect. Yesterday, we had so many players who were off the pace. We slowed everything down (and not for the first time this season). We allowed Forest to keep in their shape because of the way we slowed everything down. Odegaard dropped an absolute stinker, and, as somebody who is supposed to be our cornerstone in this team, we can’t be having that. I thought the balance of the attack was wrong, and having Gyokeres playing with Martinelli and Madueke on either side just feels pointless. Gabriel Jesus offered nothing when coming on either, so he’s hardly the answer, so perhaps having Merino in there would have been a better call. Certainly, at halftime, you can make those changes. Odegaard dropped a stinker, was hooked before the hour was off, but I think the move was to swap him for Eze and then Gyokeres for Merino. Merino played well when he was on. He offered more threat than Viktor, but giving a player like Eze 11 minutes plus stoppage time to do something isn’t enough. He’s the kind of guy who needs to ‘feel’ his way into the game.

Arteta got his approach all wrong. His assertion that Saka was carrying something doesn’t wash for me. If that’s the case, don’t play Saka in midweek; the Premier League is more important than the League Cup, and Arteta played his strong hand then when he should have been playing it today. I’ll tell you one thing right now, I REALLY hope he doesn’t go strong again for Inter. We have daylight in the Champions League, we have another home game against a Kairat team at the bottom of the whole league, and we can rotate heavily and still should be beating. And if we do that, then that’s 21 points confirmed, even if we lose to Inter and it confirms a top-two spot. There should be no reason for playing a strong team in midweek. Manchester United is priority number one, and seeing them with their new manager bounceback yesterday, we need to make sure we are ready, because they will have a whole week to prepare for us.

I’ll say a final word on the penalty incident. Firstly, you can’t be relying on the referee to get you out of games like this. We needed to have taken our other chances, and then this would have become an incidental situation. But that’s a penalty. I’m not sure how you can cup the ball with your hand to try to keep it in play inside the box and it not be a penalty. When VAR looks at that and says, “It came off his shoulder first,” I have to just laugh. He LITERALLY tried to keep the ball in play with his arm. You can’t say that hitting the shoulder should have any distance. No doubt we’ll have some Dermot Gallagher gaslighting on Ref Watch tomorrow, but it’s a penalty; we’ve been shafted a bit there. But we shafted ourselves by not taking our chances.

Unfortunately, I’ve said I’d do a post-game show with Amanda and James in which we talk about this game, which was hardly a classic. But if you want to join us, you can do so – click here at 1 pm, where we’ll be going live.