By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-03-06 12:28:20 | Updated at 2025-03-06 16:43:07
4 hours ago
This weekend will pit two teams with completely different playing styles against one another in the Premier League. Will the fast and direct Nottingham Forest prevail, or can Manchester City’s slow and intricate football put a dent in the home side’s European aspirations?
There’s more than one way to win a football match.
Ahead of Saturday’s meeting at the City Ground, Nottingham Forest and Manchester City are probably the two best cases in point, with each winning 14 Premier League games this season despite having dramatically different playing styles.
Over recent seasons, Pep Guardiola’s Man City side have brushed all aside with their possession-heavy, slow, and intricate style, becoming the first team in history to win four consecutive men’s top-flight English league titles. That formula hasn’t worked so well in 2024-25 though, with City now 20 points behind league leaders Liverpool with 11 games left to play.
Man City are on course to top the league rankings for average possession (60.6%) and successful passes per game (540) for the ninth successive Premier League season since Guardiola took over as manager. In fact, in all 17 top-flight league seasons that the Spaniard has managed at City, Bayern Munich and Barcelona, his teams have always topped both categories. This is the way his sides play, and usually it brings success. But not so this season.
Last week, when asked if he had plans to adjust City’s style of play after a disappointing campaign, Guardiola promised to stick to the formula that had made them – and him – so successful.
“We are not going to try to adapt. When we have the squad, we can play in this way. As long as I am the manager, we are going to adjust depending on the quality of player, but we are going to try to play the way that defined that team for many years that had the success.
“The only difference is that there were more teams in the past who were cautious. Now the teams are so brave, so that is a little bit different.”
One of the bravest this season have undoubtedly been Forest, who sit a point ahead of City in the Premier League table and are on course to cause one of the biggest shocks in the competition’s history. While not quite on the scale of Leicester City’s monumental title win in 2015-16, should Forest qualify for the UEFA Champions League this season, it would easily be the biggest surprise in the Premier League since then.
In terms of playing style, this Forest side aren’t too dissimilar from that successful Leicester team.
Forest are the most ‘fast and direct’ side in the Premier League this season. They progress upfield with open-play sequences at 2.08 metres per second while averaging the fewest number of passes per open-play sequence (2.8) in the competition. They have the lowest average possession figure (39.7%) and complete just 263.5 passes per game – less than half City’s average (540.3).
When Leicester won the Premier League, they averaged even fewer successful passes per game (248.1) than Forest have this season. They also led the league rankings that season for direct speed (2.26 m/s) and recorded the fewest passes per open-play sequence (2.4). Not unlike this season, it was a campaign that saw many of the more-fancied sides underwhelm and the underdog capitalised on the chaos.
It has to be said that Forest have also had fortune on their side with a relatively kind injury record, but another similarity to Leicester’s class of 2015-16 is that Nuno Espírito Santo’s side have used the fewest players in the Premier League in 2024-25 (23). During the Foxes’ title win, they used the smallest selection of players, too (23).
Bournemouth are the closest to Forest in terms of their speed of attack and lack of passes needed to progress up the pitch, and like Nuno’s men, they are unexpectedly challenging for a place in the Champions League next season.
As their numbers suggest, this Forest side don’t rely on long passing sequences to generate attacking opportunities. Across the Premier League this season, only Crystal Palace (30) have had fewer build-up attacks – open-play sequences containing 10+ passes and ending in a shot or with at least one touch in the box – than Forest (32). In comparison, Man City lead the Premier League ranking with 181, over five times Forest’s tally.
Ipswich Town (39.3m) are the only Premier League side who have started their open-play possessions closer to their own goalline than Forest (39.4m) this season. Again, City are at the opposite end of the scale, with the highest start distance in the competition (46.2m).
But the statistic that displays the starkest difference in how both teams treat possession shows that City’s open-play sequences last an average of 15.7 seconds in Premier League games this season (the highest), while Forest’s average is just 7.4 seconds, less than half the time and the lowest in the competition.
Being compact has helped Forest become one of England’s strongest defensive teams this term, and they have done it through restricting their opponents to low-quality chances.
Just three teams have conceded fewer goals than Forest (33) in the 2024-25 competition, while only Liverpool (12) have kept more clean sheets (11). And although City don’t concede as many non-penalty shots as Forest (261 vs 366), the quality of those shots matters. For instance, it is preferential to concede more shots of poor quality than fewer shots of great quality, and that’s where Forest excel.
Only Arsenal (0.082 xG) have allowed opponents lower-quality non-penalty shots on average in the Premier League this season than Nottingham Forest (0.087 xG) based on expected goals. In simpler terms, the average shot Forest have faced in non-penalty situations this season we’d expect to be scored 8.7% of the time.
Compare that to City and the difference is eye-opening. The defending champions have given up an average shot quality of 0.133 xG (or an expected conversion rate of 13.3%), which is the highest of all Premier League teams this term.
Saturday’s match will undoubtedly see City trying to build possession from deep and progress slowly up the pitch. Forest have shown this season that they aren’t concerned about pressing high, either. In fact, across all Premier League teams in 2024-25, they are the side with the lowest proportion of pressures in the final third of the pitch (18.9%), which again makes them the polar opposite to City, who lead the rankings in this metric (38.3%).
City didn’t have any problems coping with Forest in their meeting at the Etihad Stadium in early December, winning 3-0. More importantly, that was a period when Guardiola seemingly couldn’t even buy a win – City had gone on a seven-game winless streak leading up to the fixture in a run that contained six defeats. Their form didn’t improve much afterwards either, with a further five winless games (L3 D2). So, if Forest couldn’t cause problems for City when they were at their worst, how will they lay a glove on them now they appear to have turned a corner?
Well, Forest’s home form could be a factor. Now unbeaten in nine competitive matches at the City Ground, winning six and drawing three, Nuno’s side have also won 23 points across their last 10 Premier League home games. Only Liverpool (26) have won more from their last 10 top-flight games in front of their own fans.
With the likelihood of City dominating possession, Forest have the potential to break their own Premier League record this weekend.
When they defeated Arsenal 1-0 on 20 May 2023, Forest averaged just 18.3% possession and completed only 80 passes all game – both are the lowest figures on record for a winning team in a Premier League match (since 2003-04).
That result saw Forest secure survival in their first season back in the top flight since 1998-99. Emulating such an unlikely win with a positive result this time around could take them one step closer to hosting European football at the City Ground for the first time since 1995.
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