Chelsea saw a run of five successive wins across all competitions come to an end against Nottingham Forest in the Premier League on Sunday.
Forest may have been the first team to inflict defeat on Liverpool, or even score past the Reds, earlier this season. But an in-form Chelsea still would have expected to take all three points against a team six places lower in the Premier League table.
Chris Wood opened the scoring soon after half-time, before Noni Madueke drew Chelsea level. Forest played the final 12 minutes plus stoppage time with ten players after James Ward-Prowse was sent off, but it was a bad-tempered affair that also descended into chaos when a melee of pushing and shoving was sparked by Neco Williams knocking Marc Cucurella into Enzo Maresca.
With the use of 90min‘s player ratings, here are Chelsea’s best and worst players from the game.
Robert Sanchez – 8/10
Chelsea might actually have tasted defeat without Robert Sanchez. The Spaniard has held on to his place as the ‘league goalkeeper’, holding summer signing Filip Jorgensen in the understudy/cup role, and this game was evidence as to why.
Sanchez made eight saves over the course of the match, but his best came towards the end when he denied a curling effort from Neco Williams.
Noni Madueke – 8/10
Noni Madueke’s importance to Chelsea has surged this season, grabbing the equaliser just before the hour mark and peppering Forest’s goal with shots.
Easily his team’s most dangerous attacking outlet all match, managing to tweak a first-half performance that lacked end product into one that made a critical impact after the break.
Nicolas Jackson – 5/10
It was one shot, no goals from Nicolas Jackson, despite Chelsea dominating the ball and creating far more than Forest over the course of the 90 minutes.
With much of Chelsea’s attack coming through Cole Palmer and the aforementioned Madueke, Jackson cut a frustrated figure for long periods. He’s shown before that he can be wound up by situations and footage later seen of the on-field melee appeared to show him push opposition defender Morato in the face, which went unpunished.
Enzo Fernandez – 5/10
Enzo Fernandez saw plenty of the ball and looked to push Chelsea on in an attacking sense, but there was more than one occasion he misplaced what should have been an easy pass.
Defensively, it wasn’t great, losing half of his ground duels, nearly all of his aerials and failing to win the only tackle he attempted during the match.
