Nottingham Forest's dismal table position is masking a side playing much better than it looks

Nottingham Forest sit 19th in the Premier League with just five points from seven games, but the underlying numbers tell a story almost nobody watching from the stands would recognise. Forest rank seventh in the division for expected goals (xG) yet have scored the fewest of any side, five, making them the biggest xG underperformers in the league at -6.2 according to Opta data reported by the Guardian.

That gap, missing out on almost a goal a game, is the central tension of Forest's season. The table says crisis. The data says bad luck. The man whose job depends on which version wins out is Oliver Glasner, and the man who decides how much time he gets is owner Evangelos Marinakis, who is "not the patient type" as the Guardian's Will Unwin puts it.

The table doesn't tell the whole story: Forest's xG problem

Forest have gone the entire season so far without scoring a home league goal, managing just a solitary point at the City Ground per the Guardian. On the surface that looks like a team incapable of creating anything.

The numbers behind the mirage

The chance-creation data says the opposite. Based purely on chances created and conceded, Glasner has overseen the best start of any Forest manager in the Premier League era. Key figures include:

• Seventh in the league for expected goals, despite sitting 19th in the table
• Fewest goals scored of any Premier League side, five in total
• Biggest xG underperformance in the division, at -6.2
• 62 home shots with nothing to show for them
• Would be fourth in the table if goals matched xG on both ends of the pitch

That is a genuinely rare combination: a team creating like a top-four side and finishing like a relegation certainty. In betting and analytics circles, that kind of divergence is usually flagged as unsustainable, a side whose underlying process points to results regressing upward rather than down.

Glasner's history: slow starts that ended in silverware

None of this will be news to Glasner, who has lived through almost identical openings twice before and come out the other side with a trophy. At Crystal Palace, his first full season began with one win in 13 league matches, yet Palace finished comfortably in mid-table and lifted the FA Cup as the Guardian notes.

A pattern too consistent to ignore

At Eintracht Frankfurt the story was near-identical: a single victory in his first 10 league games, followed by a Europa League triumph reported in the same piece. Twice now, a brutal early-season sample has preceded a season that ended in silverware.

The common thread is a squad learning an unfamiliar system. Glasner's back three and double No 10 shape is a significant departure from what most of his players have known, and that kind of tactical relearning rarely shows up as points in the first two months. BBC Sport reports that Forest have lost five of their opening eight games in all competitions, but notes belief in Glasner remains intact inside the club according to the BBC, a detail that aligns with the Guardian's framing of a club deliberately trying to avoid its old short-termist habits.

Delap's confidence crisis and the Anderson gap

Forest spent £45m on Liam Delap this summer, a striker they had tried to sign before he went to Chelsea, and the club retains strong faith in him despite a difficult debut campaign at Stamford Bridge per the Guardian's reporting. He returns to Ipswich, where his career first took off, on Friday night.

A striker short of rhythm, not ability

Delap has scored just once for Forest and carries a career record of one goal every five league appearances. A lack of pre-season football compounded his difficult year at Chelsea, leaving him short of the sharpness needed to convert Forest's chance-creation into goals. He has still shown quality in other areas, setting up a goal at Anfield with a quick throw-in and nearly repeating the trick against Arsenal, only for Chris Wood to miss the resulting chance.

Replacing a departed talisman

The sale of Elliot Anderson, described as the club's best player, left a creative void in midfield. Glasner's response was to shift James McAtee into a deeper role alongside free signing Xaver Schlager, while also bringing in Ousmane Diomande in defence and convincing Daniel Muñoz to follow him from Selhurst Park. It is measured recruitment aimed at specific gaps rather than the scattergun approach that followed Forest's promotion, but it still leaves the side without the guaranteed goal threat and creative spark Anderson and a fully-firing Delap would provide.

Marinakis's patience: the real variable to watch

The biggest threat to Glasner's project is not tactical, it is boardroom-driven. Twelve months ago Forest were on their third head coach of a chaotic season, and this summer the club was ruthless enough to remove Vítor Pereira despite him having done "a fine job to escape the drop" the Guardian reports, purely because the chance to upgrade to Glasner presented itself.

The owner's track record

That willingness to act decisively, even against a manager who had technically succeeded, is the context that frames every bad result now. Glasner himself has pushed back on the idea Forest are playing badly.

"It feels very unfair. We have to accept we are missing some bits. But the performance in many parts was very good."

Glasner made that comment after the Arsenal defeat, in which Forest allowed just a single shot on target, a deflected effort that proved the winner according to the Guardian. He also pointed to the absence of captain Morgan Gibbs-White, the team's attacking fulcrum.

BBC Sport captured a similar sentiment in a separate interview, with Glasner saying:

"It feels unfair but I "

The BBC's Nick Mashiter reports that despite the results, belief in Glasner remains within the club, a position consistent with the Guardian's account of a board trying to resist its old instincts. The two outlets differ slightly in wording and context of the quotes, one tied explicitly to the Arsenal result, the other framed more generally around the team's start, but both capture the same message from Glasner: the performances do not match the outcomes, and he is refusing to let the squad adopt a victim mentality.

What happens next

Forest's trip to Ipswich on Friday is an immediate opportunity to convert process into points, with Delap facing the club where his career began and under pressure to find his first City Ground form on the road instead. A win would ease the external noise considerably, even if the underlying numbers suggest Forest were never as bad as the table implied.

The bigger question is how long Marinakis is willing to let the numbers do the talking if results do not turn quickly. Forest's history under his ownership, including three head coaches in a single season and the swift removal of a manager who had just kept them up, suggests patience has never been the default setting at the City Ground.

For bettors and analysts, Forest's xG profile makes them one of the more obvious regression candidates in the Premier League this season. For Glasner, the challenge is surviving long enough, in a results-driven industry, for that regression to actually arrive.