A Tough Cup Quarter Final In Brighton & Hove

A random selection of stats and facts ahead of the game. Contents are listed below if you want to skip to what intrigues you the most.

Schrödinger's Taiwo

It seems likely that Forest will be missing the New Zealand Nous of Chris Wood for this FA Cup tie. It will be Taiwo Time at The American Express Stadium (use it's full name please becuase Amex sounds less like they sold their soul, than they actually did).

Taiwo Awoniyi has had to watch 90% of Forest's league minutes from the bench this season. Bench players often live in a constant paradox of being both brilliant and shite at the same time. In Taiwo's case he is either a proven Premier League striker that just needs games, or he's 'not the same player' as he was due to his injuries. Either of those two outlooks could be right, we simply don't know until we open the box and he gets a run of games.

The judgements being made about Taiwo so far this season are based on a rare sighting of him on the pitch. So the real question is, can a player and specifically a striker ever be judged based on fleeting appearances in the last 10-20 mins of a game. How do you know he's not the same player he was when his average time on the pitch this season has been jsut 13 minutes a game. I can't imagine many players are scouted and signed by watching 13 minutes cameos.

Taiwo has appeared in 22 of Forest's 29 league games which is much higher than I expected. However he has only had 2 starts, amassed 278 minutes which means his average appearance time is less than 13 minutes. We can use this as a benchmark to see how well strikers typically do when they only average around 13 minutes per game, to see if Taiwo should be judged on it.

Strikers With Limited Minutes

There aren't many strikers that appear as often as Taiwo but for so few minutes. I ran a filter on Premier League forward players in the last 10 seasons that had started less than 5 games in a season, but made at least 10 appearances, with those appearances being less than 20 minutes on average.

The total number of players on the list was only 49. As you will see in the table below, generally these players do not have much impact. No striker is coming on for 15 minutes a game, and still ending the season with a decent goal tally of say 10+ goals. The best return on the list was Forest's favourite deadline day target, Michy Batshuayi who managed 5 goals in 2016-17 from only 1 start and 19 sub appearances, averaging 20 mins a game.

The main take away from the list is that only 23 of the 49 players on the list even managed to register a single goal. On average players in Taiwo's situation only manage 0.71 goals in the entire season. More than half the players on the list didn't even manage to have a shot. Of the players that do manage a shot the average shot conversion rate is 18%. Taiwo's current shot conversion rate is 11% so he can improve there, but he does have a goal this season which already puts him in a better position than half the list. Taiwo is basically playing the Sam Surridge role from the 22/23 season for us, and he's performing about the same.

My view is therefore that we simply can't judge Taiwo from what he has or hasn't done in his little cameo appearances. Strikers need to play games to score goals and look sharp, we all know that. But often chose to ignore it when it comes to wanting more from our own players. You only ever see the best of other teams players, but you get to see the best and worst of your own squad.

We know Taiwo can be clinical as a striker. The numbers show that when he was playing regularly he could be as clinical as Chris Wood. This season is special from Chris Wood, if you want Taiwo to be that good then the closest comparison you could make would be Jhon Duran at Villa who did manage to be a super-sub-striker from limited minutes. Duran averaged 32 minutes per appearance (double Taiwo) and averaged a goal every 90 minutes this season. His conversaion rate was still only 23% however, some 7% worse than Wood and worse than Taiwo managed in his two more regular seasons at Forest. If you want to replace Taiwo with Duran then fine, but it'll cost you £70m.

The chart below shows shot conversion rate for each player & season since promotion. This season Taiwo's conversion rate of 11% is less than half as good as his previous seasons. If you look at the company he is keeping down the lower end of the chart though with the likes of Dennis, Surridge, Jota, the common theme is they all struggled for minutes to build up any form.

Taiwo can improve, but we can only judge that when he gets more game time. The chances are he will continue to be limited to cup games and 13 minute cameo's this season. If Forest are to replace him, then it will be interesting to see how they go about that if Chris Wood remains as the first choice striker and any player coming will have to do a 'Batshuayi' to impress.

Is It Actually A Goal Issue That's Keeping Taiwo On The Bench?

Yes of course it's Chris Wood's goal scoring form, but it's not just that. Chris Wood's intelligence on the pitch is also a factor in why Taiwo hasn't been given more chances in my view. Chris Wood marshalls the centre circle for Forest, defends from the front, knows when and where to press. I've noticed in games the little hand signals he does to others to organise the press. He's built up the relationships that matter at this level to avoid leaving spaces for teams to exploit. I'm not sure that side of the game is Taiwo's strength and it might leave us more vulnerable to teams opening up our midfield in dangerous ways if Wood is injured for any length of time. For this game we have to hope Taiwo can stop the seagulls ruffling our feathers and much as we also want him to ruffle theirs.

Team Selection For The Cup

Ryan Yates Cup Stalwart

If you were picking the team based on which players have the most cup game experience in their time at Forest, their is one name that's first on the team sheet. Our glorious leader Ryan Yates who has more than twice as many cup minutes for Forest than any other player in the current squad.

It's actually Danilo who has played the most FA Cup minutes for Forest since the start of the 22/23 season. He has logged 509 minutes from 5 starts, which ranks him with the 21st most minutes of any player in the competition since 2022. A Danilo/Yates midfield might not be out of the question.

Ola Aina is a surprise at the other end of the chart considering he's been here for almost 2 seasons now, only playing 120 cup game minutes, but he might have missed some games due to AFCON last season. In fact Ola Aina has played less cup minutes for Forest than Eric da Silva Moreira.

Who Needs A Rest?

The chart below compares the number of minutes played for Forest & Brighton's key players in the league this season. You can see that Forest players occupy five of the top six places which goes to show our consistency of selection. Especially in defence. Forest also occupy ten of the top fifteen places on the chart.

Clearly Brighton have relied much more on squad rotations and do have more depth than Forest. A dilemma for Nuno to manage the quick turnaround going into the Man Utd game only 3 days later. We all worry a lot about injuries in cup games, yet I wonder how often it actually happens? I don't have any stats for it, but I suspect the fear is much higher than the reality. 

Ryan Yates Creates In The Cup

If you want cup goals, you start Ryan Yates. Yates has five goals in his 22 cup games for Forest so far. If we turned that into a 38 game season he'd get 9 goals in that season which would better any season he's actually managed in the league for Forest. He has also picked up 4 assists along the way, more than any other player for Forest since 2014. Ryan Yates is the cup specialist we need.

Brighton Opposition Preview Stats

Forest's trip to the American Express Stadium earlier in this season was tough. We only managed 3 shots on goal, only 2 on target and one of them was a penalty. It was our worst game of the season for creating chances, but in true Forest style we still managed a win. The sending off of MGW didn't help, but to be fair Brighton did dominate the game despite a decent start for Forest. The return game at The City Ground was therefore unexpected, maybe just one of those weird football days. The first goal for Forest seemed to deflate Brighton. I expect we will need that kind of lucky deflection to help kick-start the game on Saturday when they are our for revenge.

Team Comparisons

Record v Other Prem Teams

Despite being in the same area of the league, Forest and Brighton have picked up their points in different ways this season. Brighton haven't failed to take maximum points so far against any of the bottom six teams! Forest have taken maximum points against nine of the bottom ten! Brighton do better against the top sides, something to watch out for becuause, well Forest are a top side!

The chart below shows the difference in points per match so far for each opposition side. The green bars are where Forest have picked up more points, the red bars show where the opposition have better results. You can see that the record is the same (+0.0) only for Man Utd & Spurs where both sides have maximum points so far.

Ultimately the difference between Forest perhaps finishing in a champions league place, and Brighton missing out will be the respective ability to pick up points against the bottom half teams. 

Dominance In The Final Third

We know Forest are clinical, we are not ball hoggers. When it comes to touches in the final third, Forest tend to have fewer than their opposition. The same applies to touched in the penalty box. Again this is very different to Brighton and the chart below plots these two measures for the players for each team. I've highlighted some particular differences between players in the forward roles to show the difference in style.

Chris Wood has less than 10 touches per game in the final 3rd and only 3 touches in the box, by comparison Joao Pedro has 23 touches in the final third and 5.5 touches in the box. Brighton's strikers are much more involved in play but importantly they just aren't as clinical as Chris Wood.

In the wide forward rolea, Minteh has more than twice as many touches in the penalty area as CHO despite Callum having more touches in the final third. They are both wide forwards, but Minteh tends to drive into the box much more. CHO is actually a bit of an outlier on the chart for not getting on the ball in the box considering how involved he is in the final third.

Goal Difference Over Time

Despite Brighton's dominance in the final third, they have rarely turned that into dominant results. The chart below shows the goal difference over a rolling six game average for both teams. The red line shows that Forest have been had a positive goal difference for most of the season. Only during the tough early season spell against Arsenal, City etc did we drop to a negative position.

It's a great sign that in the more recent difficult run of games, we managed to maintain a positive goal difference. Largely thanks to the 7-0 win over Brighton. Forest also have managed some periods of being very dominant with a spell of games where the GD was above 1.5. Those back to back 2-0 wins away at Everton, Brentford etc.

Brighton on the other hand have never managed a spell of games with a GD much above 0.5. Even in their recent run of good results, their goal difference has only just been above 0. Brighton have also had three spells in the season where their goal difference dropped below zero. Including of course after that 7-0 defeat to Forest. It's more evidence of Brighton being inconsistent and not putting the lower placed teams to the sword.

Opponent Chance Quality

Forest's season has been defined by our defensive record. The clean sheets etc. It's a valid take on it, but it's also interesting to note that Forest have become slightly less defensively sound as the season has gone on. Not always a bad thing, because we've started to score more goals as well.

The chart below shows the quality of chances each team have given away as the season has gone on. Forest started with a mean defence, and Brighton started quite the opposite, but as the season has progresaed the trend suggests that Brighton will end the season giving away lower quality chances than Forest.  So while Brighton have at times dominated games with the ball, it's perhaps their ability to improve defensively that's helped turn their form around. Basically they have copied Forest!

Goalkeeping

Despite Brighton's improved defensive resolve, their goalkeeper hasn't had the best of seasons and remains a weak point for Forest to exploit.

The chart below plots the average Save % over a 6 game average for each team. You can see for Forest Matz Sels has been very consistent with the dashed line showing around a 75% save rate throughout and not too many swings downwards. Sels best spell came in the run of games up to Southampton at home and has been dipping since then, but the opposition quality has gone up in that time.

Brighton's keeper(s) have been anything but consistent by comparison. During the middle spell of the season averaging less than a 40% save rate. The good news for Forest is that save rate has been dipping again lately. The current six game average for Forest is 75% and for Brighton only 45%. So if Taiwo can get some shots on target, he might just get lucky. The post-shot xG chart backs up the same trend in the GK performance.

The Dribble Masters

They love to dribble over in Brighton. When comparing the two squads for Attempted Dribbles Per 90 you can see Brighton players fill the 7 of the top 10 spots. We like to think of CHO as a player that takes people on, but by comparison to Minteh he attempts half as many per game. Jota Silva is the only Forest player trying to upset the top part of the chart with almost four dribbles per 90. The trouble is these are the attempts and Jota only manages to go past his man about 30% of the time, whereas Minteh manages it almost 50% of the time.

The Secret War With Brighton

In the all-time Premier League table Forest and Brighton are going head to head to finish this season in 27th place. Only one point seperates the teams right now, Forest are on 367 points, Brighton are on 366. Yes, Brighton have done it in fewer games, but lets ignore that for now. After this cup game we still have something to fight them for in the final nine league matches to try and finish this season ahead. We are following the Brighton model in more ways than one.

The Goals Battle

Beady-eyed folks might also notice from the all-time table that Forest & Brighton have the exact same number of goals in Premier League history as well. Each team having racked up 365 goals. It's another battle to keep an eye on over the final nine games of the season to see if we can out-score Brighton.

What is particularly beautiful is how that 7-0 win impacted the goals war. The chart below shows the goals total for each team from the start of this season. Back then Brighton were 4 goals ahead of Forest and managed to maintain a lead for much of the season. They even increased the lead to 8 goals at one stage. Then came their trip to the city ground where Forest turned the tide by 7 (seven) goals to go above Brighton for the first time in about 100 games on the timeline. It's almost like the players knew this was their best chance to win this little battle.

So in summary.  It's going to be a tough game. Lots of work off the ball to deal with their players. Lots of 1v1 battles to win. Lots of defending for Taiwo to do before he can worry about getting that crucial goal that might send Forest back to Wembley quicker than we expected.

That's all folks. Thanks for reading. Come on you Reds!