Nottingham Forest Reserves Humiliate Chelsea as Awoniyi Scores Twice
Nottingham Forest arrived in west London with one eye on Europe and another on survival. They left with both ambitions burning brighter and Chelsea buried under another heap of embarrassment.
Vítor Pereira rolled the dice. Eight changes from the side that had beaten Aston Villa in the Europa League semi-final first leg on Thursday, with the return leg looming in three days’ time. On paper, it looked reckless. On the pitch, it looked like a masterstroke.
“I changed the players but not the spirit,” he had said. His fringe players proved him right, and then some.
Bakwa shreds Chelsea, Awoniyi punishes
Chelsea were behind almost before they had taken a breath.
Two minutes in, Marc Cucurella switched off. Dilane Bakwa didn’t. The winger darted in behind on the right, teased a cross to the far post and Taiwo Awoniyi bullied his way onto it, thumping a header past Robert Sánchez. Simple run, simple cross, simple finish. Chelsea static, Forest ruthless.
Stamford Bridge, already tense, turned sour.
The pattern repeated itself 13 minutes later, only uglier for Chelsea. Again Bakwa isolated Cucurella, this time just gliding past him, cutting him out of the picture with a few sharp touches before fizzing another ball into the box. Awoniyi went for it, Malo Gusto tugged at his shirt, and the striker hit the turf.
VAR stepped in. Anthony Taylor checked the monitor, pointed to the spot. Igor Jesus stepped up and rolled his penalty in with icy calm. Fifteen minutes gone, 2-0 down, and Chelsea’s 13th straight league game without a clean sheet already locked in.
The crowd didn’t explode. It simmered. The anger felt too familiar to be loud.
Chelsea offered almost nothing in response. Possession without penetration, bodies without belief. They were second best in the duels, second best in the races, second best in the ideas. Forest’s so-called understudies looked like the only first-team on the pitch.
Pereira’s gamble no longer looked bold. It looked like he’d simply read Chelsea correctly.
Chaos, concussion and a missed lifeline
On the touchline, interim head coach Calum McFarlane cut a helpless figure. His surprise selection, debutant Jesse Shaun Derry, had struggled from the outset and then met a brutal end to his first Premier League appearance.
As first-half stoppage time approached, a Chelsea corner found Derry at the back post. His first header was weak. He went bravely for the second. Zach Abbott went for the same ball. Two teenagers, one horrible collision. Heads smashed together, both players down.
Abbott eventually walked off. Derry did not. He left on a stretcher after a stoppage of more than 10 minutes, the stadium quiet, the game drifting into something that felt far more serious than form or tactics.
Taylor had awarded a penalty for Abbott’s challenge. It felt like a lifeline Chelsea scarcely deserved. Cole Palmer, usually so reliable, stepped up after the long delay. Matz Sels guessed right, plunged low to his right and pushed the ball away. Another groan, another chance wasted, another reason for Forest to believe this was their day.
Pereira twists the knife
Pereira had kept key men in reserve with Thursday in mind. At half-time, he unleashed them.
On came Elliot Anderson. On came Morgan Gibbs-White. Within five minutes, they had settled the contest.
Anderson took the ball between the lines and split Chelsea open with one sharp, vertical pass. Gibbs-White burst beyond Cucurella – again – timing his run to perfection. The Forest No 10, in electric form in recent weeks, didn’t snatch at glory. He squared selflessly. Awoniyi arrived to tap in his second. Three-nil. Game over in everything but the clock.
Chelsea’s defending had gone from sluggish to shambolic. Forest, rotating, managing minutes, thinking ahead to Europe, were still sharper, hungrier, cleaner in every action.
Gibbs-White’s cameo, though, ended as abruptly as it had begun. On the hour, he and Sánchez collided in another sickening clash of heads as they chased a loose ball. Blood, bandages, another long stoppage. Gibbs-White departed for Chris Wood. Sánchez made way for Filip Jörgensen. Between Derry, Abbott, Gibbs-White and Sánchez, the league maximum of four concussion substitutes had been used. It felt less like a match and more like a triage ward.
João Pedro’s acrobatics too little, too late
Chelsea finally found a flicker of resistance with just over 15 minutes left. João Pedro thought he had scored, nodding in after Sels had saved his first effort. VAR stepped in again, this time to deny him. The wait for a league goal dragged on.
Deep into added time, he tried again. This time, he produced something outrageous.
Cucurella, so tormented defensively, delivered from the left. João Pedro cushioned the ball on his chest and, with his back to goal, launched into an overhead kick that ripped into the net. No flag, no VAR reprieve for Forest, just a moment of pure technique.
It was Chelsea’s first Premier League goal in seven games. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a cathartic roar. Instead, the reaction was muted. The damage had been done long before. One acrobatic consolation couldn’t disguise the gulf in intensity, structure and belief.
Forest’s rotated XI had run through a Chelsea side that looked drained of ideas and conviction. Pereira protected his stars, kept his European dream intact and still walked away with a statement win that drags his team closer to safety.
Chelsea, by contrast, are left staring at a grim question: if this is what a second-string Forest can do to them at home, where exactly is the bottom of this slump?
