Tottenham 0-3 Nottingham Forest: Spurs point above the drop after crumbling again
Tottenham 0-3 Nottingham Forest: Spurs point above the drop after crumbling again Tottenham suffered another humiliating home defeat as Nottingham Forest’s 3-0 victory meant fears of relegation from the Premier League in north London edged ever closer to becoming reality. Brazilian striker Jesus headed in from a corner just before half time, despite Spurs enjoying most of the ball and threatening with Mathys Tel down the left hand side, with the Frenchman hitting the bar after going behind. Gibbs-White was afforded acres of space inside the Spurs penalty area to slot under Guglielmo Vicario before substitute Taiwo Awoniyi’s late header saw Forest leapfrog their relegation rivals and put a three-point buffer between them and West Ham.
As it happened Callum Hudson-Odoi was asking questions of Djed Spence early on, and caught him ball watching when Elliot Anderson slipped in behind him. He fell to the ground without much protest, and no penalty was awarded. Tottenham’s brightest outlet in the first half, Mathys Tel was involved for the first time on 13 minutes as he send Ola Aina to the ground with a drop of the shoulder before cutting in from the left and seeing his effort deflected over off of Murillo.
Striker Igor Jesus narrowly avoided an own goal minutes later as he inadvertently headed Kevin Danso’s long throw onto his own cross bar, but was on target at the other end in the closing stages of the first half. Just after Guglielmo Vicario denied his overhead strike once Elliot Anderson headed a loose ball back into the penalty area, Jesus powered home the resulting corner at the back post to leave the home faithful with their heads in their hands. For good reason, too, as their side had only managed to recover five points from a losing position at half time since November 2024, miserably winning none of those 28 matches.
Tel would respond quickly and came very close to levelling in some style, yet Matz Sels got fingertips onto his curling effort from distance to send it crashing against the crossbar as rising tensions had him and his teammates booed off at the break. Tottenham got off extremely lightly five minutes into the second half as Nico Williams could only direct his header right at Vicario, on the end of a wicked cross from Elliot Anderson having drifted wide to support Omari Hutchinson. Their afternoon went from bad to disasterous when Gibbs-White had acres of space just 10 yards from goal, and took the invitation to fire the ball at goal with too much venom for Vicario to deal with as it bobbled in under his gloves.
Registering just one shot on target with 15 minutes to go, substitutes Lucas Bergvall and Destiny Udogie linked up nicely but the Swede could only sent the latter’s low cross from the left wide of goal on the stretch as time quickly dwindled. Spurs’ fate of a league worst 10th home defeat was sealed as Awoniyi headed in a cross from deep on the left wing, prompting a mass exodus from the Tottenham Hotspur stadium as the crisis in north London deepened further with just nine games to go.