Nottingham Forest's Struggles Continue Despite Dominant Performance Against Ipswich
Liam Delap’s return to Ipswich was supposed to be a reminder of what he once was. Instead, it became a stark illustration of what he is still struggling to be.
Nottingham Forest left Portman Road with a 1-1 draw that did nothing for their league position but said plenty about their performance, their manager’s ideas and their centre-forward’s crisis of confidence. They dominated Gary O’Neil’s Ipswich for long stretches, created the better chances, imposed their structure. They just did not win.
Glasner’s blueprint, Williams’ finish
Forest arrived second from bottom, but you would not have known it from the opening exchanges. Oliver Glasner kept faith with Delap despite his recent misses, and his team repaid him early with a display that looked far too polished for a side in trouble.
Within six minutes they had Ipswich rocking. Jair Cunha went close, then Delap – released by the returning Morgan Gibbs-White – thrashed a wild effort off target. Wasteful, yes, but the tone was set: Forest on the front foot, Ipswich chasing shadows.
The breakthrough came on 13 minutes and it was pure Glasner. Delap wrestled with Issa Diop and held the ball up, Gibbs-White nipped in ahead of Dara O’Shea, and suddenly the move was flowing down the right. Daniel Munoz surged on, lifted his head and picked out the opposite wing-back. Neco Williams arrived perfectly, met it on the volley and drilled a right-footed finish past Christian Walton.
One pass, then another, then a ruthless end product from deep. A training-ground pattern, executed at full speed.
Ipswich flickered briefly in response. Julio Enciso bent a free-kick over the bar, but Forest kept control. Gibbs-White dragged one effort wide, then thought he had scored when he beat Walton, only for Leif Davis to sprint back and hook the ball off the line. Forest were sharper, braver, cleaner in everything they did.
And then they handed Ipswich a lifeline.
Milenkovic’s gift and Enciso’s punishment
With four minutes left in the half, there seemed little danger. O’Shea launched a long ball forward, Nikola Milenkovic brought it down with time to spare and turned towards his own goal. The simple option was on: roll it back to Matz Sels, reset, go again.
Instead, the defender under-hit his back pass horribly. Enciso saw it before anyone else. He pounced, raced clear and slid his finish into the bottom corner. One moment of composure from Ipswich’s forward, one moment of carelessness from Forest’s centre-back, and the game was level.
From dominance to damage limitation in a heartbeat. Glasner’s side walked down the tunnel knowing they had done almost everything right – and yet given up everything they had worked for.
VAR drama and missed chances
The second half erupted almost immediately.
On 47 minutes, James McAtee burst through and Diop hauled him down. Referee Thomas Bramall waved play on, astonishing Forest’s players and bench. VAR intervened, Bramall went to the monitor, but the outcome only fuelled their anger: a yellow card for Diop, no dismissal.
Forest failed to make anything of the resulting free-kick, but they refused to retreat into frustration. They pushed again.
On the hour, Williams saw another shot blocked in a crowded area, Murillo spun and forced a save from Walton. Soon after, Murillo threatened again, Dan Ndoye followed up, and once more Davis was there with a vital intervention in front of goal. Ipswich were hanging on, relying on last-ditch defending and desperate clearances.
The pressure kept building. The clock kept ticking. And then the script turned back to Delap.
Delap’s moment goes begging
Sixteen minutes from time, the chance he must have imagined all week finally arrived.
Abdoul Ouattara sliced a clearance high into the air inside his own box. Delap read it, peeled away, and found himself under a dropping ball with the goal at his mercy. Portman Road held its breath. This was the 12-goal striker who had lit up this ground last season, now with the chance to punish his former club and maybe ignite his season.
He headed over.
Not wide, not saved. Over. Too high, too rushed, too heavy for a player who once made this look easy.
He tried to make amends from distance, thundering a 30-yard drive just past the post later on, but the moment had already gone. Forest kept coming, Ipswich clung on, and the final whistle felt like a release for the home side and a rebuke for the visitors.
A point that feels like a loss
On paper, a draw away from home is rarely disastrous for a team near the bottom. In reality, this will sting. One win from eight league games under Glasner tells its own story, but so does the performance: structure, chances, territory – all there. The cutting edge was not.
Williams embodied the best of Forest: aggressive, purposeful, clinical when it mattered. Milenkovic and Delap carried the weight of the worst: a single lapse at the back, a single miss at the other end, both punished by a Premier League that does not forgive.
Glasner can point to progress, to patterns, to control. The table will not care. At some point, Forest have to turn dominance into wins.
The question now is simple: how long can they keep playing this well without the results tearing their belief apart?
