Nottingham Forest 1-0 Porto (Morgan Gibbs-White 12′) – Nottingham Forest win 2-1 on aggregate
The last time Nottingham Forest played a European quarter-final home leg, they were 5-0 down against Bayern Munich before they knew what had hit them. This may not be the team of Pearce and Stone, Cooper and Roy, but Forest’s dream lives on. Pack away the passports; it’s Aston Villa up the road between them and Istanbul.
When you plead your case to whichever higher being floats your boat, an opposition red card and a deflected goal within the first 12 minutes would make the first sentence of the prayer. Jan Bednarek’s studs-first challenge on Chris Wood looked worse with every replay. It is a different knee to the one that has plagued Wood this season; breath will still be held at the City Ground.
Such is the warping of priorities fuelled by a desperation to keep their seat at English football’s top table, Forest’s European knockout campaign has been a weird, slightly intangible entity. They had won away twice and lost at home twice, picked strong teams and changed teams.
This is Vitor Pereira’s privilege and his challenge: find a way of juggling daggers and firesticks without dropping anything. Staying up is non-negotiable, but wasn’t European adventure the one thing everybody dreamed of most? You do have to pinch yourself and remember that this is not normal around here.
But it’s tricky. Consider Forest’s own inherent mania, which has both fuelled their surges and checked its progress. How fitting that we are in mid-April and their entire season could still be the fourth best in their 161-year history or end in relegation back to somewhere they took 24 years to escape.
If they are to nip past Villa – and Forest will be second favourites – then Morgan Gibbs-White will be their kingmaker. In the first half on Thursday evening, Gibbs-White produced one of his best periods in a Garibaldi shirt. There is some competition for that honour.
Forest’s attack is still not close to clicking, not really. Igor Jesus waits for the ball more often than looking for it. Whichever two wingers start seem to either beat their man and find nobody with a cross or simply fail to beat the man at all. Possession is stodgy and stilted too often to unnerve high class defences.
Gibbs-White changes that. He dips into space and drops deep. He mostly plays the right pass at the right time and then he busts a gut to get close to goal. In the first 30 minutes, Porto gave him enough room for him to weave a dream.
And now he scores goals too. Since the turn of the year, Gibbs-White has scored eight times. More often than not he is Forest’s one-man band: scorer, creator, captain, leader by example. For all the mistakes made by this club last summer, keeping hold of him might just save them.
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But speak to anyone at Forest and they will tell you that the secret weapon is the work rate. Gibbs-White orchestrates the press and leads it too. It is astonishing how often the ball appears magnetised to his position in the final third. It is a side of his game that too many outside Nottingham miss.
The England omissions have stung Gibbs-White. You can see why, given the players selected in the last squad who were inclusions on reputation rather than form. The World Cup place he craves may now be out of grasp.
