Nottingham Forest Held to Draw by Ipswich Despite Dominance
Nottingham Forest left Portman Road shaking their heads again, trapped in a nightmare they can’t seem to wake from: chance after chance, dominance on the ball, numbers on the xG screen – and still, not enough on the scoreboard.
They drew 1-1 with Ipswich. They should have been out of sight.
Forest racked up 17 shots to Ipswich’s seven, piled up 2.31 expected goals, and yet left Suffolk with only Neco Williams’ first-half strike to cling to. The story of their season, distilled into 90 maddening minutes.
Forest on top, but punished
From the opening whistle, Oliver Glasner’s side played with the wind at their backs and the intent to match. Jair Cunha tested Christian Walton inside six minutes, a firm drive that signalled exactly how Forest planned to spend their evening: on the front foot, hunting.
The breakthrough came on 13 minutes and it was a beauty. Daniel Muñoz swung in a superb cross from the right, Williams ghosted in at the back post and swept his finish past Walton. A goal that reflected the pattern. Forest were sharper, quicker, cleaner.
They should have doubled that lead. They thought they had. A scramble in the box saw Walton get the faintest of touches before a desperate goal-line clearance from Leif Davis kept Forest at bay. It set the tone. Ipswich clung on, Forest kept knocking – and then handed them a lifeline.
With four minutes to go before the break, Nikola Milenkovic misjudged a routine pass back to Matz Sels. Julio Enciso pounced on the loose ball, raced through and calmly rolled in the equaliser. Against the run of play, Ipswich were level. Against the run of Forest’s season, it felt horribly familiar.
The Diop flashpoint
The second half exploded into controversy.
James McAtee burst through, the goal looming, when Issa Diop’s challenge wiped him out on the edge of the box. Referee Thomas Bramall initially kept his card in his pocket, then headed to the monitor after VAR intervened.
The home crowd held its breath. Forest’s bench waited for the red.
It never came. Bramall emerged, awarded the free-kick, and showed only a yellow, explaining to the stadium that because McAtee had knocked the ball to the right of goal, it did not constitute denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.
Forest were furious. Glasner did not hide it.
“It felt during the game it's a clear red card. I think it was the wrong decision,” the Forest head coach said afterwards, his frustration barely disguised.
Former Forest boss Steve Cooper, watching on pundit duty, called it a failure in the process, insisting the foul should at least have been given immediately, even if the colour of the card would always divide opinion.
The sense of injustice only deepened as the game wore on and the misses piled up.
Line clearances, wasted chances, and a growing riddle
The pressure grew, wave after wave of Forest attacks rolling towards the Ipswich goal. Davis, already a saviour once, turned up again on 64 minutes to hook Dan Ndoye’s effort off the line. Another near-certain goal, another escape for Gary O’Neil’s side.
Liam Delap will relive his moments. Up against his former club, he climbed to meet a misjudged Abdoul Ouattara clearance with the goal gaping, only to send his header over the bar. Later, he unleashed a 30-yard drive that skimmed just wide. Close, but not close enough.
Callum Hudson-Odoi was no more clinical. Given a clear sight late on, he drilled wide when composure was needed. Ipswich, creaking but unbroken, survived again.
To compound Forest’s frustration, Williams – their scorer and one of their best on the night – departed with a worrying arm injury. On a night when everything else seemed to go wrong in front of goal, losing him felt like another heavy blow.
Ipswich almost stole it at the death when substitute Jack Clarke fired off target in stoppage time. It would have been brutal on Forest. It would also have been entirely in keeping with their season.
Numbers that tell a brutal truth
No team in the Premier League has underperformed their expected goals like Nottingham Forest this season. They have scored just six times from 13.4 xG. The gap is not a quirk; it is a chasm.
Eight games, one win. Performances that promise far more than the table will ever admit.
Morgan Gibbs-White voiced the confusion that hangs over the dressing room.
“We've had so many good performances. Again tonight, I felt like we had a lot of chances. We should have won the game,” he told Sky Sports, pointing to shooting drills in training where, as he put it, “it was top.”
On the touchline, Glasner tried to hold onto the positives, even as he acknowledged the obvious.
“Unfortunately they couldn't go in today. It's not good enough but I'm proud of the boys for continuing to keep going and keeping performances high,” he said. He praised an “amazing” second-half reaction, their dominance, their spirit, and insisted: “The goals will come.”
They need to. Soon.
Ipswich dig in, and look up
For Ipswich, this was a different kind of achievement. They were second-best for long spells, forced to cling on, yet they emerged with a point that quietly nudges their season forward.
O’Neil’s side now have as many points at Portman Road in this Premier League campaign as they managed in the whole of 2024/25: seven. That is not a footnote; it is a marker of how far they have come.
“We want a second year in the Premier League but we will try and finish as high as we can,” O’Neil said. He pointed to Forest’s quality and spending power as proof of the level Ipswich are trying to live with. His team, he argued, have “found a way most weeks to bridge the gap.”
On this evidence, he is right. They bent, but did not break.
Forest, though, walk away with something far less comforting: a performance that should have brought three points, and another night that left them staring at the same, stubborn question.
How long can a team keep playing this well, missing this much, and stay out of real trouble?
