Arsenal arrived at the City Ground with the chance to extend a lead at the top after Manchester City\u2019s derby defeat, only to be held to a 0-0 draw by Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
The result leaves Arsenal with back-to-back 0-0 Premier League draws for the first time since the start of the 2012-13 season and hands the initiative back into the title race. Their advantage will be trimmed to four points on Sunday should Aston Villa maintain their home record against Everton.<\/p>\n
David Raya kept a quiet night, 7.6, with Forest rarely testing him aside from one wild attempt to beat Igor Jesus to the ball. The full-backs had mixed evenings: Ben White 6.9 struggled to impact the overlap consistently while Noni Madueke and Bukayo Saka faced a lot of two-on-ones; Jurri\u00ebn Timber 6.7 received a yellow for pulling back Callum Hudson-Odoi and looked an awkward fit in midfield.<\/p>\n
Defensively William Saliba 7.4 and Gabriel Magalh\u00e3es 7.0 were comfortable for long spells as Forest did not threaten in and around Arsenal\u2019s box enough to unsettle them. Declan Rice 7.5 was subdued by his standards, while Mart\u00edn Zubimendi 6.7 and Martin \u00d8degaard 6.5 could not produce the decisive moments in the middle.<\/p>\n
Madueke started on the right (6.7) and saw plenty of the ball but could not break down Neco Williams. Gabriel Martinelli 6.5 somehow dragged a chance wide that would have opened the game and was replaced at half-time. Viktor Gy\u00f6keres 5.5 was isolated and offered only one sight of goal in 55 minutes.<\/p>\n
Second-half changes included Leandro Trossard 6.3, Mikel Merino 6.4, Bukayo Saka 7.3 and Gabriel Jesus 6.2. Saka\u2019s introduction immediately created a chance that saw Declan Rice scuff a volley and then saw Sels fingertip away a header from Saka.<\/p>\n
Forest matched Arsenal physically and defended set pieces admirably, nullifying the visitors\u2019 brightest openings. Statistically Arsenal offered more: 61% possession, 2.07 expected goals, 15 total shots and 3 on target; Forest had 39% possession, 0.34 xG and 6 shots with none on target. In the end neither side produced a match-winner and the game finished as a fragmented stalemate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal failed to capitalise on City’s loss as a stubborn Nottingham Forest held them to 0-0. tonight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1381,298],"tags":[1162,984,826],"class_list":["post-6018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-match-reports","category-nottingham-forest","tag-analytics","tag-ben-white","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}