There’s a huge game at Bournemouth, a huge game at Arsenal and … er, a huge game at Portman Road Premier League top scorers: latest Golden Boot race Nuno Espírito Santo said that at Bournemouth last weekend, where they were humbled 5-0, his Nottingham Forest side had been “not accurate and missed a lot of passes”. It is interesting that four of Forest’s last five – and five of their last eight – Premier League games rank in their bottom eight of the season on pass completion. “We have to perform much better,” he said. “We have to be more solid and play better football. We have so many things to improve.” Though results in that period, at least until last week, continued to be good they have relied on statistically unlikely displays of finishing prowess. Before their trip to Bournemouth, Forest had scored with nine of their previous 12 shots on target in all competitions and the last time a Chris Wood shot on target failed to go in was before Christmas. Both Nuno and Fabian Hürzeler were sent off for misconduct during a rancorous conclusion to the fixture between these sides at the Amex Stadium last September. Simon Burnton Nottingham Forest v Brighton, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT) Bournemouth v Liverpool, Saturday 3pm Everton v Leicester, Saturday 3pm Ipswich v Southampton, Saturday 3pm Continue reading...

Ange Postecoglou has serious shortcomings as Spurs manager. But he has hardly been helped by a team trying to do things on the cheapSign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here The good news for Ange Postecoglou is that it seems relatively straightforward to recover from being Tottenham manager: his two immediate predecessors, Antonio Conte and Nuno Espírito Santo, are top of Serie A with Napoli and third in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest respectively. As the banner unveiled by Spurs fans during Sunday’s defeat to Leicester read: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy”. Nobody really looks at Tottenham any more and thinks the problem is the manager. But it is usually the manager who pays the price. Their last 10 league games have yielded four points. They’ve just lost to Everton, who hadn’t won in six, and to Leicester, who’d lost their previous seven. They’ve reached a stage at which it feels possible that they could lose any given fixture. The only saving grace is that they’re 1-0 up against Liverpool after the home leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final and that they’re sixth in the Europa League table, assured of automatic passage to the last 16 if they beat the Swedish side Elfsborg on Thursday. This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition Continue reading...