Nottingham Forest soared back to third in the Premier League table on Monday night after they beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 away from home.
The Tricky Trees are now three points ahead of Chelsea in sixth place in the race to secure Champions League football for the 2025/26 campaign.
Goals from Elliot Anderson and Chris Wood helped to seal the victory for Nuno Espirito Santo’s side on the night, whilst Richarlison’s late goal meant nothing in the end.
Anthony Elanga's performance against Spurs
Anthony Elanga was one of the stars of the impressive first-half display that gave Forest a commanding 2-0 lead heading into the break, as he set up the second goal.
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The Sweden international whipped in a teasing delivery that gave Wood the chance to rise above Guglielmo Vicario to make it 2-0, with a fantastic inswinging cross that caused chaos for the Spurs defenders and goalkeeper.
Other than that ‘big chance’ that he created, though, Elanga did fail with both of his attempted dribbles and lost five of his six duels before being taken off at the break.
Forest’s other attacking midfielder, Morgan Gibbs-White, meanwhile, had minimal impact with zero key passes, zero ‘big chances’ created, and a pass accuracy of 76%.
Meanwhile, the rarely-seen Harry Toffolo, starting his first Premier League game of the season, was even better than both Elanga and Gibbs-White with his excellent showing at left-back.
Why Harry Toffolo may have saved his Nottingham Forest career
The former Norwich City and Huddersfield Town left-back had only played three times, all as a substitute, in the top-flight prior to being named in the starting XI on Monday night.
He has been an unused substitute on 15 occasions in the Premier League, but has now given Nuno a headache heading into the final matches of the campaign after a fine display.
Toffolo’s best moment of the match came in the clip above, when Alan Smith claimed his clearance “defied physics”, when his intervention on the line prevented Dejan Kulusevski from finding the back of the net.
It was a crucial moment in the game because Spurs would have had a goal back with around 30 minutes still to play, giving them ample time to push for an equaliser, instead of the three minutes they had after Richarlison’s goal in the 87th minute.
Minutes
90
Clearances
4
Blocks
2
Tackles + interceptions
4
Duels won
3/5
Dribbled past
1x
As you can see in the table above, the left-back’s all-round display across the 90 minutes was impressive, making two blocks, four tackles and interceptions combined, and four clearances to go along with his goalline heroics.
These statistics show that he was even better than Elanga, whose all-around performance was poor aside from his brilliant assist, and Gibbs-White, who struggled throughout the game, as the full-back excelled to help Forest on their way to all three points.
He may now have forced his way into Nuno’s plans for the rest of the season, in ther bid for Champions League qualification, after sitting on the bench for most of the campaign so far.
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