Nottingham Forest looked more likely to get relegated from the Premier League this season than finish in the top half. Now they’re in a title tilt. How?
They’re a club with a proud history, having won two European Cups, but dark clouds have billowed over them this century.
They endured a painful 23-year exile from the top flight. In the last two seasons, they had to firefight against relegation and were regularly mocked for their wacky ‘throw money at the wall, buy anyone that breathes’ transfer strategy.
Not now. Now their business looks shrewd – they’ve spent £4.7million per point earned this season, whereas Manchester United have squandered £46.7m. Now they’re the talk of the town, chasing Champions League dreams and giving Liverpool and Arsenal a run for their money. Forest host Liverpool next Tuesday and could climb to within three points of the league leaders with a win.
What makes it all the more fascinating is that they’ve become a sort of Robin Hood of the Premier League, pinching from the rich and giving to… well, themselves. They were handed odds of 100/1 to make the Champions League at the start of the season. Now they’re in a strong position to qualify.
Their manager and lots of their players tasted failure at the big clubs and had a point to prove when they arrived at Forest. Now, many of them are thriving while their grand old sides flounder. And they’re enjoying life off the pitch just as much as on it.
Little-fancied Nottingham Forest are having the time of their lives, third in the Premier League
Morgan Gibbs-White is one of the stars of the show (pictured with influencer girlfriend Britney De Villiers)
Meanwhile, wing-back Ola Aina is proving his style on and off the pitch and is an investor in Sokito, a sustainable football boot brand
The manager
Leading the operation is manager Nuno Espirito Santo, who has transformed the club in his 13 months in charge.
He has a unique background. Nuno was raised on an island in the Gulf of Guinea off the west African coast, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean and, he said, learning how to kill boa constrictor snakes as a child.
Initially, Nuno had a mixed reception as a Christmas present when he arrived on December 20, 2023, two years after leaving Tottenham in humbling circumstances.
The Portuguese was sacked by Spurs after just four months in November 2021 on the back of deafening boos. It didn’t help that he had only been their fifth choice to begin with behind a series of other names who rejected them. He had grown unpopular with fans because Spurs simply couldn’t score.
Lots of people would have laughed at the suggestion that Nuno could manage a Champions-League level English club ever again. But Forest saw the potential in him and now Europe’s top table is firmly in their sights. Nuno had done extremely well at Wolves between 2017 and 2021, leading them from the Championship into regular European football. After leaving Spurs, he decamped to Saudi Arabia and won the league title with Al-Ittihad.
All this takes sacrifice. Nuno admitted to The Times while he was at Wolves that he really missed his wife Sandra, who had stayed behind in Porto to work as an interior designer. Sandra is a sounding board for everything, even the team. She also gets frustrated when they go on holiday together and Nuno refuses to wash off sand from a day at the beach, even before bed.
‘I want salt on me, I want sand,’ he said. ‘I go to bed and I fight with my wife because I’m not ‘clean’. I want to have this much salt on me and then I start to stink of course.’
He is a softly spoken manager, not one to boast, and would be the first to play down Forest’s expectations this season, but also staunchly sticks by his beliefs and direct style of play when others question him. At his insistence the training ground dining area has been transformed into a stylish restaurant, with high-quality coffee, smoothies, and activities such as table tennis and table football. Like legendary Forest boss Brian Clough, he understands the need for communal spirit.
Manager Nuno Espirito Santo – the mastermind behind the unlikely rise – pictured with his interior designer wife Sandra
He has brought back the feel-good factor for a team who many tipped to struggle at the start of the season
The star striker
The main star on the pitch in Forest’s renaissance is Chris Wood. If you’ve followed the Premier League and Championship over the last 15 years or so, you’ll know he’s been rather hit and miss.
Things changed this summer when he tied the knot with long-time partner and solicitor Emma Lovell at a five-star hotel, which was once an 11th-century palace, on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. He’s now having his best-ever season at this level.
Journeyman is the right word for Wood. Forest are the 13th club of a meandering career that has had its fair share of ups and downs across his native New Zealand and England’s top-three divisions.
Cruelly, he left Leicester in the summer before their title-winning season and it took hard work in the Championship with Leeds to earn another move to the Premier League with Burnley.
At Turf Moor he shone. The six-foot, three-inch target man was the perfect battering ram for Sean Dyche’s hardy Clarets. In five seasons there he had an unlikely taste of European football, scored 49 league goals, and at the end of it earned his first big-time move to Newcastle for £25million, their first signing after their money-spinning Saudi takeover.
But there, he looked past his best. There, he looked the wrong side of 30. Now 33, his years look all the advantage, as he knows how to link up play for his team-mates – and be in the right place at the right time for relentlessly bagging goals.
He’s smashed home 12 strikes in the Premier League this season, a tally bettered by only five other stars. Six of them have been game-winning.
What’s more, he is clinical. Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland might have a few goals more, but they’ve had almost double the shots. Wood is a man who can hit the bullseye at the first time of asking.
Star striker Chris Wood pictured at his summer wedding on the Amalfi Coast with wife Emma
Wood has struck 12 goals this season, competing with the league’s most prolific strikers
Pictured with his wife Emma and their dogs at their first Christmas since tying the knot
The creative cast
The key ingredient in Wood’s success is the trio of creators behind him: Anthony Elanga on the right wing, Callum Hudson-Odoi on the left wing, and Morgan Gibbs-White through the centre.
They’re all young, hungry, and play with freedom. Crucially, they’re all at Forest to right their names. Gibbs-White, in the middle, makes the team function like clockwork.
A furiously hard worker, Forest’s No 10 spent last season having to defend a lot more but is now getting more time to show off in the attacking third. In September, then-England interim boss Lee Carsley rewarded him with his international debut after a fine year.
He is a product of Wolves’ youth academy and it’s safe to say there was a toxic response to him leaving for their Midlands rivals in 2022. He admitted that he had fallen out of love with his football in his final months at Molineux.
On Monday he and his influencer girlfriend Britney De Villiers were brutally mocked as Forest played Wolves (winning 3-0, mind, with Gibbs-White netting after just seven minutes). ‘Your girlfriend’s a s**g,’ Wolves fans chanted whenever he touched the ball.
His perfect response was to score early on and then run towards the corner flag, where he celebrated by sticking both fingers in his ears. I can’t hear you.
Gibbs-White is currently dating influencer De Villiers, and the couple enjoyed a New Year’s getaway with Elanga and his partner China Navana as they all went skiing together.
De Villiers posted about the romantic trip away on her Instagram profile, where she has 275,00 followers. Gibbs-White and De Villiers have a son, Graysen, who was born in November 2023.
Gibbs-White is one of the premium stars playing the role of attacking midfielder for Forest
Wolves fans sang mocking songs about his girlfriend Britney De Villiers, but he had the perfect response with his goal celebration (previous picture)
Gibbs-White and his girlfriend Britney have a son, Graysen, who celebrated his first birthday in December
Gibbs-White (left), Callum Hudson-Odoi (centre), and Anthony Elanga (right) are the pace-filled creative heartbeat of the team
Meanwhile, Elanga was an award-winning youngster at Manchester United but they let him go for £15m to Forest in 2023, a figure that now looks piddling.
‘I was very young and I was coming into a team that was struggling. Yes, there was the thought that, ‘I am playing for Manchester United’. But I also never felt as though I was improving. I was playing for the sake of playing when I did get the odd opportunity off the bench,’ Elanga told The Athletic in December.
With more responsibility at Forest he is thriving. Elanga reckons he is the fastest player in the Premier League and seeing how fast he thunders down the right flank in Forest’s counter-attacks, you’d be a brave soul to bet against him.
He’s in a long-term relationship with China Navana, giving him a sense of stability away from the tumult of Premier League action. They’re a fan of action holidays together – think jet skis, shadow boxing underwater, and boat trips, but there’s also plenty of time for beaches in destinations such as Mykonos.
On the other wing, Hudson-Odoi. He knows what it’s like at the top of the mountain. He made his Chelsea debut at 17, England bow at 18, and was on the bench for the Blues’ Champions League triumph in 2021.
He also knows pain. In 2019 an Achilles injury impacted his career indelibly, derailing his progress. He struggled to become a regular starter at Chelsea and joined Forest on deadline day in 2023, reuniting with his old England Under-17 coach Steve Cooper.
With each week he looks more like the footballer he expected to be pre-injury, driving at full-backs, stretching defences, generally being a menace.
Between them Elanga and Hudson-Odoi have bagged six assists from the flanks this season, which is achievable when you’ve got a heading machine like Wood to aim for.
Talented winger Elanga pictured in a romantic snap with partner China Navana
The pair have enjoyed holidays together for years, with some exciting activities such as jet skiing
Hudson-Odoi’s career at Chelsea was hampered by an Achilles injury, but he’s recovered his explosive running at Forest
He is sponsored by Adidas and is no stranger to showing off his latest outfits on social media
Other outcasts from big clubs
There are other names in this curious tale.
Wing-back Ola Aina didn’t make the grade at Chelsea or Fulham but has rediscovered himself in Middle England.
He’s way more stylish than most of us, as seen in some of his Instagram fits, but he’s all business on the pitch. He’s also an investor in Sokito, one of the world’s first sustainable football boot brands.
Midfielder Elliot Anderson didn’t even want to leave boyhood club Newcastle but found himself forced out for financial reasons.
Meanwhile, free-kick specialist James Ward-Prowse might have felt he was taking a step down when he left West Ham on loan in the summer. The Hammers didn’t want him, just a year after buying him. How opportune his loan has been.
Right-back Neco Williams looked like a hotshot for Liverpool at one stage but left, knowing that breaking past Trent Alexander-Arnold would be nigh on impossible.
And then there’s goalkeeper Matz Sels, who has the most clean sheets of any goalkeeper this season. That didn’t look very likely when he flopped at Newcastle in the Championship years ago. He’s served several years of playing in Belgium and France, rebuilding his reputation.
This Nottingham Forest team don’t care about what’s gone before. Underestimate them at your peril.
Goalkeeper Matz Sels has become a hero in between the sticks despite previously flopping at Newcastle in the Championship
He left French club Strasbourg to link up with Nottingham Forest in the 2023-24 season
Former Chelsea and Fulham star Aina is becoming a style icon in his own right
Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis welcomed Mail Sport into his offices in London last year
The exuberant owner
There are few owners as box office as Evangelos Marinakis in football.
Worth an estimated £3billion, the plain-speaking Greek ploughs the funds into Forest’s coffers with great generosity, but it’s paying off for him. And he’s no absent owner, like many – you’ll regularly see him at the City Ground.
Mail Sport enjoyed sitting down with Marinakis last year to play table football with him, take a closer look at his arm tattooes, and saw a different side to a man who is known to many fans for his blasts against referees and VAR, a softer side.
He grew up in Piraeus, the port city – just five miles from central Athens – where Greek gianst Olympiacos located. His father Miltiadis was an Olympiakos investor from 1979, long before Marinakis himself purchased the club in 2010. Last season they became the first Greek club to win a European trophy, the Europa Conference League.
Much has happened in the almost eight years since Marinakis purchased the Forest, just days after they avoided relegation to League 1 on goal difference. Relegation battles, play-off euphoria, an FA Cup quarter-final and EFL Cup semi-final. He’s seen it all.
‘I enjoy the uphill, not when it’s easy. The struggle. The most fun is the chase, the way we create. I like the journey. Enjoying a victory is just for a few seconds but the journey is what I’m interested in,’ he told Mail Sport.
The journey, for this season at least, could hardly be going better.
