Brentford capitalise as Nottingham Forest’s attacking struggles continue

Poor Nottingham Forest. And, especially, poor Nikola Milenkovic. It would be unfair to say that Brentford fluked a win in the 100th Premier League game at the Getch Community Stadium but Forest had 15 shots to their six and have every right to wonder why luck has deserted them so absolutely this season. Only one of Brentford’s goals went down as an own-goal, but both went in after hefty deflections off Milenkovic. A sixth successive defeat for Forest in games played on Hallowe’en must have them wondering about curses and an inexplicable run of misfortune.

For both sides there has been a sense that things might have been better than the table suggests. No side has underperformed their xG as significantly as Forest, who went into the weekend third in Opta’s expected table but third-bottom in real life. Part of their issue has been the form of Liam Delap, who arrived in the summer from Chelsea for £50m, but has scored just once since. The 23-year-old is beginning to look like another victim of Chelsea’s trading model. Confidence shot, the purposeful striker of his Ipswich days has become a mess of flailing arms and wild finishing. By the time he was withdrawn 20 minutes into the second half, Delap had had three shots, none on target.

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