Forest's Late Winner Over Leverkusen Ended Two Streaks. Only One Of Them Should Matter
Dan Ndoye put Nottingham Forest ahead inside four minutes against Bayer Leverkusen at the City Ground on Wednesday. Leverkusen equalised before the break, and the sides went in level at 1-1. Forest found a winner in first-half stoppage time added... no, in the first minute of second-half stoppage time, to close out a 2-1 win, according to VAVEL's live match report.
That result did two things at once. It ended Forest's three-match pre-season losing run, which had included defeats to Sporting CP, Udinese and Barcelona, according to Sports Mole's pre-match preview. It also ended Leverkusen's perfect summer. The German side had won all five of their prior friendlies, scoring 19 goals along the way, per Bundesliga.com's build-up coverage. Wednesday was their first defeat since Carles Martínez took over as head coach in July.
The scoreline isn't the story
A friendly win in August tells you almost nothing about October. Forest supporters know that better than most, having spent a full pre-season under a new manager, Oliver Glasner, still figuring out who plays where. What's worth paying attention to isn't the 2-1, it's what happened between Ndoye's early goal and Forest's late one. Leverkusen equalised and had the better of long stretches, by most in-game accounts, against a side that had lost its previous three matches by narrow margins. Forest didn't fold. They kept pushing for a winner against a team that hadn't lost all summer, and they got one in the final minute.
That's a different kind of signal than the result itself. Composure under pressure, in a meaningless match, is still composure. It doesn't guarantee anything once Leeds United arrive at the City Ground on August 22 for the real thing. But it's a more useful data point than the final score, because it's about how the team behaved when the game wasn't going their way, not just how it ended.
Leverkusen, for their part, have little to worry about. One defeat after five wins, under a coach barely six weeks into the job, is what pre-season is for. Martínez will have learned more from the concession than Forest will have learned from the win.
