- Arsenal v the man who never won a north London derby
- Arsenal v Forest: The referee who reverses all the normal statistics
By Tony Attwood
Nottingham Forest is called “Forest” because they started playing at the Forest Recreation Ground, which at some stage might have been in Sherwood Forest, but isn’t any more. Moving forward a little bit in time, they had Brian Clough as manager, but he left after he relegated the club out of the Premier League, his job done.
Since the Cloughian experience, they have hopped around the league between the top three divisions, undoubtedly just to see what it was like. They won promotion back to the top league in 2022 and have come 16th, 17th and 7th in the last three seasons.
Part of their transformation has come through having Chris Wood as a continuous goal scorer – he got 20 last season. The last time anyone scored more for the club in the league was back in 1997/98 when Pierre van Hooijdonk knocked in an amazing 34. Except that he then disagreed with the manager, and his goal scoring stopped. By 2000 they were back down in Division 1.
Forest came back into the top league in 2022/23 and finished 16th, 17th and 7th in their last three seasons – the progress of last season being emphasised by the fact that they got to the semi-final of the cup. Top scorer was Chris Wood for the second season running – this time knocking in 20.
The club is owned by a rather large gentleman known as Ευάγγελος Μαρινάκης or perhaps more commonly in this country, Evangelos Marinakis, who is described as a ship owner and businessman. His occupations include involvement with a company called Alter Ego Media – a company so obscure that even Wikipedia doesn’t have a listing for it. He is also a councillor for the municipality of Piraeus, and looking at pictures of him, one might also contemplate the possibility that he is a restaurateur, but I have no evidence of this. But I do think he is a shipowner as noted.
Politically, he is a member of the Piraeus Victor party, buying Nottingham Forest in 2019, having previously bought Lambrakis Press Group in 2017, on the basis that if you own a football club it is always a good idea to own a media outlet to talk about the club.
After the Second World War, Nottingham Forest tried out the 3rd Division South for a couple of seasons, but then came back to their normal occupation of alternating between the top two divisions.
They have won the FA Cup twice, the second time beating the mighty Luton Town in the final but then did lose in a later final to the slightly less mighty Tottenham Hots in 1991. They have also won the League Cup fou times, in two pairs of consecutive seasons. But they have won only one of their last ten league games against Arsenal.
A look at their last ten games in the Premier League suggests that they have been struggling of late. As the table below shows, there have been three wins in the ten , three draws, and four defeats.
However, there is one particular thing we might notice about their wins in this run of ten games….
| Date | Game | Res | Score |
| 12 Apr 2025 | Nottingham Forest v Everton | L | 0-1 |
| 21 Apr 2025 | Tottenham Hotspur v Nottingham Forest | W | 1-2 |
| 01 May 2025 | Nottingham Forest v Brentford | L | 0-2 |
| 05 May 2025 | Crystal Palace v Nottingham Forest | D | 1-1 |
| 11 May 2025 | Nottingham Forest v Leicester City | D | 2-2 |
| 18 May 2025 | West Ham United v Nottingham Forest | W | 1-2 |
| 25 May 2025 | Nottingham Forest v Chelsea | L | 0-1 |
| 17 Aug 2025 | Nottingham Forest v Brentford | W | 3-1 |
| 24 Aug 2025 | Crystal Palace v Nottingham Forest | D | 1-1 |
| 31 Aug 2025 | Nottingham Forest v West Ham United | L | 0-3 |
Yes, all three wins that they have achieved in the last ten games have all come against London teams, although West Ham did break this winning streak by beating Nottingham Forest in Nottingham 0-3 last month.
But what is particularly bizarre to the point of being utterly bonkers is the fact that all of Nottingham Forest’s games this season up to and including Arsenal, are against London teams! I don’t think I have ever seen this sort of thing before in the fixture list. As you can see above they have beaten Brentford, drawn with Palace and lost of WHAM. And given their record of beating London teams, there must surely be a suggestion that their fixture arrangements were fixed, although of course I make no allegation that money changed hands.
Besides, that defeat to WHAM was something of a turn up given that West Ham themselves had lost to Sunderland, lost to Chelsea, and lost to Wolverhampton (away in the League Cup) before they beat Nottingham Forest away 0-3. It is, as I think I once heard someone say, a funny ol’ fixture list.
