Forest's Six-Goal Season: Wasteful at Brentford, Bottom Three Again

Brentford marked their 100th Premier League game at the Gtech Community Stadium with a 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest on 31 October 2026. Nikola Milenković turned Dango Ouattara's low cross into his own net on 30 minutes, and Igor Thiago finished from close range on 76. For Brentford, managed by Keith Andrews, it ended a four-match winless run. For Forest, it was the latest entry in a season that is going wrong at the one end of the pitch where games are decided.

Oliver Glasner's side have now scored six league goals in 2026/27, the lowest tally in the Premier League. They remain in the bottom three. They were booed off by their own supporters at the Gtech, and it is not difficult to see why the mood has turned.

The raw numbers from this match are awkward for anyone who wants to describe Forest as simply second best. Glasner's side had 58 per cent of possession, 15 shots to Brentford's seven, and four corners to three. They also had one shot on target, the same as Brentford. The expected goals tell a similar story: Forest 0.85, Brentford 0.46. One big chance each.

So Forest generated more, and better, shooting situations than the team that beat them by two. That is the shape of their season. Their 0.85 xG here sits well below their average of 1.98 across earlier 2026/27 matches in all competitions, and their open-play xG of 0.66 is down on an average of 1.45. Their goals minus expected goals in this match was -0.85, against an average of 0.0 across those earlier games. In other words, the chances are not only becoming fewer; on this evidence they are also being missed.

Reports of the match have leaned on the wastefulness rather than the volume, and the numbers support that reading. Forest's problem at Brentford was not that they never got into shooting positions. It was that almost nothing came from them.

The comparison that will not go away is with 2024/25, when Nuno Espírito Santo's Forest took 19 wins and eight draws from 38 Premier League games, a return of 1.71 points per match. Under Glasner this season, the record is one win, three draws and four defeats from eight, or 0.75 points per game. The results before and including this match run: a 2-1 win at Aston Villa on 12 September, then home defeats to Coventry and Arsenal, a 3-1 loss at Crystal Palace, a 1-1 draw at Ipswich, and now this.

Squad turnover is the obvious place to look for an explanation, and Forest have had plenty of it. Since the summer they have brought in Xaver Schlager, Ousmane Diomande, Liam Delap, Lorenzo Lucca, Gustavo Sá and Daniel Muñoz. They have lost Elliot Anderson, Morato, David Carmo, Taiwo Awoniyi, Arnaud Kalimuendo-Muinga and, notably, Gustavo Sá — signed and departed within the same window. That is a lot of movement through the attacking and creative areas of a squad, and the equilibrium Nuno found has not been rebuilt.

Whether that turnover is the cause of the decline, or merely the backdrop to it, is the question the coming weeks will answer. What is already clear is that Forest's build-up play is producing enough to suggest a team that should be scoring more than six goals in eight matches, and not nearly enough to suggest a team that will climb out of the bottom three on current form.

Glasner carries the pressure that comes with those results and that reaction from the away end. The fixture list, not the table, will decide how long it lasts.