Can Ange Postecoglou’s side return to winning ways in the hunt for Champions League football? We look ahead to Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest with our prediction and preview.
Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest Stats: The Quick Hits
- The Opta supercomputer predicts Tottenham overcoming Nottingham Forest, with the home side winning 61.0% of pre-match simulations.
- Son Heung-min has been involved in 11 goals in his last 12 Premier League appearances at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
- Forest have scored 3+ goals in two of their 14 league games under Nuno Espírito Santo, as many times as they did in 55 matches under Steve Cooper.
Match Preview
Tottenham will be hoping to further their UEFA Champions League charge when Nottingham Forest make the trip south for Sunday’s Premier League meeting at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Spurs were held to a frustrating 1-1 draw at local rivals West Ham on Tuesday as Kurt Zouma’s header cancelled out Brennan Johnson’s fifth-minute opener at London Stadium. Yet Ange Postecoglou’s side still made ground on fourth-placed Aston Villa, who lost 4-1 at Manchester City the following day.
Sunday’s hosts – who still have a game in hand – are two points behind Unai Emery’s side heading into the weekend’s action, in which Tottenham’s clash with Forest was brought forward from Monday due to travel disruption in London.
Forest will have to deal with a familiar face in former academy product Johnson, who has been involved in more Premier League goals than any other Spurs player (7 – four goals, three assists) since the turn of the year. His 12 total goal involvements in 2023-24 (five goals, seven assists) are also the most by a Welsh player in a campaign since Gareth Bale’s 13 in 2020-21.
On the opposite flank, Son Heung-min has contributed to 11 goals in his last 12 top-flight outings at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (seven goals, four assists), having also scored in Spurs’ 3-1 home win over Forest last March.
As for Spurs’ team news for Sunday’s late kick-off, Postecoglou confirmed that Johnson should be available after a slight knock against West Ham, though Manor Solomon, Fraser Forster and Ryan Sessegnon remain out.
Postecoglou’s side were 2-1 comeback victors over Luton Town in their last home league outing and have now come from behind to win five Premier League home matches this season. Those responses suggest Spurs react well when the pressure is on, and Nottingham Forest travel to the English capital with relegation stress on them, too.
Nuno Espírito Santo’s side overcame Fulham 3-1 in midweek after a blitzing first-half display saw goals from Callum Hudson-Odoi, Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White.
However, Forest still sit just three points clear of 18th-place Luton Town in the league table, after their four-point deduction last month for alleged breaches into the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules.
Though Championship football next season could still be a possibility, Nuno has at least got Forest scoring in the league again. They have managed 3+ goals in two of their 14 Premier League games under the Portuguese coach, as many times as they did in 55 matches under former manager Steve Cooper.
Forest will be looking to net three or more goals in consecutive top-flight games in the same season for the first time since March/April 1995. Nuno could also contribute to an unwanted record against former side Spurs, who he managed in the 2021-22 season for 10 games.
Having already suffered a home defeat to Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea, Spurs could become just the fourth Premier League club to lose against two former managers in the same campaign, along with Glenn Roeder and Harry Redknapp against West Ham in 2006-07, Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish against Blackburn in 2011-12 and David Moyes and Marco Silva against Everton this season.
In terms of the visitors’ team news, Nuno Tavares could return from a thigh injury, while Taiwo Awoniyi and Willy Boly will miss out.
Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest Head-to-Head
Tottenham have triumphed in five straight Premier League meetings with Forest, keeping four clean sheets in that run, having lost six of seven clashes between the two sides between 1993 and 1997.
Postecoglou’s side were 2-0 victors in the reverse meeting this term, as Richarlison and Dejan Kulusevski were on target before Yves Bissouma’s 70th-minute red card at the City Ground.
Away in this fixture, Forest have lost their last two league visits to Tottenham, having suffered just one defeat in their previous 11 trips before this (W8 D2).
Recent Form
Forest have won just two of their last 25 away Premier League matches (D7 L16), while they are winless in their previous five such games since winning their first trip under Nuno at Newcastle United on Boxing Day.
That failure on the road will likely be compounded here since Tottenham have won 11 of their 15 home league games this season (L4), and are the only side yet to draw a match on home soil in 2023-24.
Indeed, after losing three in a row across November and December, Postecoglou’s team have won seven of their last eight at what is rapidly becoming a fortress – rather than a ‘nightclub’ as the Australian labelled it earlier this season – at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (L1).
Tottenham have only failed to score in one of their last 42 Premier League matches as well, doing so in a 3- 0 defeat to Fulham last month. No side has scored in more different games than Spurs’ 29 this campaign, too.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest Predicted Lineups
Tottenham vs Nottingham Forest Prediction
Among the Opta supercomputer’s predictions is a victory for Tottenham, who triumphed in 61.0% of 10,000 pre-match simulations, compared to Forest winning just 15.9%.
A draw may be the visitors’ best hope, with that result forecast in 23.1% of the same data-led model, though that would further damage Spurs’ Champions League aspirations.
Villa’s defeat at Man City saw their fourth-place prediction drop to 50.5% in Opta’s end-of-season simulations as Tottenham’s chances of the same league-table position jumped to 48.2%.
Forest, meanwhile, have just a 19.2% likelihood of beating the drop, ahead of Luton (79.2%), Burnley (95.6%) and Sheffield United (99.2%).
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