While established heavyweights Liverpool and Arsenal are the big names in the Premier League this season, there is a third, unexpected contender in the 2024-25 title race – Nottingham Forest.

Nuno Espirito Santo’s side narrowly avoided relegation last season, but a miraculous upturn in form and results this season has catapulted them into the new year in fearsome fashion, securing a decent lead as underdogs in the fight for the championship.

Forest beat Nuno’s former team Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-0 on Monday to secure their sixth league win straight away. After more than half the season, they are level on points with second-placed Arsenal and six behind leaders Liverpool. Considering they only gained promotion to the Premier League in 2022 and marked their first season back in the top flight with a seemingly chaotic recruitment strategy that saw 30 players signed across two transfer windows, it’s a remarkable turnaround.

Of course, there is a recent precedent for a team defying all odds to win the Premier League: Forest’s East Midlands neighbors Leicester City maintained their irrepressible form throughout the 2015/16 season to claim one of the most unlikely titles in history of history.

With Forest only due to face Liverpool in the league at the City Ground next Tuesday and Arne Slot’s side having already beaten them at Anfield, this seems as good a time as any to assess the plausibility of their title credentials.

Nottingham Forest’s flying form

After scoring three unanswered goals against Wolves at Molineux, Forest extended their Premier League winning streak to six games in a row. Since the start of December they have also beaten Manchester United, Aston Villa, Brentford, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton. This is the first time since the 1966/67 season that Forest have won six consecutive games in the top flight. At that time they were also fighting for the title in what was then the First Division, but had to admit defeat to Manchester United.

Forest have now won 10 of their last 13 Premier League games and have been firmly anchored in the top four since a 2-1 win over Villa on December 14. With 40 points from their first 20 games, Forest are already eight points better than their last points tally from last season, when Nuno’s side finished 17th with 32 points from 38 games.

Of the 70 teams that have accumulated 40 or more points in the first 20 games of a Premier League season, only four have not finished in the top four at the end of the season. That’s right, Forest fans: qualification for the UEFA Champions League is all but guaranteed! Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but the way things are going, European football could return to the City Ground for the first time since 1995/96.

Who are the main players in Forest?

While it may not quite match Forest’s legendary vintage of the late 1970s, when the club won its only league title and back-to-back European Cups, Nuno’s players have been incredibly consistent this season.

The star is probably 33-year-old striker Chris Wood, who has rolled back the years and scored decisive goals. With 12 Premier League goals in 20 games, Wood is currently on fire. He is already just two goals shy of his best season tally in the top flight (14), which he has scored twice – first at Burnley in 2019/20 and most recently at Forest in 2023/24.

The New Zealand international has excelled as a physical penalty area poacher, providing the perfect focal point ahead of Anthony Elanga, Morgan Gibbs-White and Callum Hudson-Odoi. This trio were all at their best at the same time, contributing nine league goals and nine assists between them.

With just 29 goals scored (the lowest in the top half of the table), their solid defensive unit has been the key aspect of Forest’s form this season. The centre-back pairing of Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic provide the steel, while goalkeeper Matz Sels has demonstrated his defensive skills on numerous occasions.

The 3-0 win over Wolves was Forest’s fourth consecutive clean sheet and ninth overall in the league this season, more than any other team. It is also the first time since March 1992 that the Reds have successfully prevented their opponents from scoring in four consecutive top-flight games.

Of all the players mentioned above, Gibbs-White is the only one to have arrived in that infamous initial flood of signings. The others have all arrived since the summer of 2023, with Milenkovic the most recent signing, arriving from Fiorentina last summer.

Can Nuno be Forest’s Ranieri?

It’s fair to say that Nuno was a somewhat ‘unimagined’ appointment when he took over Forest in December 2023, despite the work he had done to get Wolves into the Premier League and them into the top flight to establish.

Prior to his arrival at the City Ground, the Portuguese manager had been sacked from his previous Premier League post at Tottenham after just three disastrous months and 17 games in charge. He was then completely out of the game for eight months before landing a job in Saudi Arabia with Al Ittihad in July 2022. Nuno won the 2022 Saudi Super Cup and then lifted Al Ittihad’s first league title in 14 years before being sacked in November 2023.

Following Steve Cooper’s sacking, he was then hired by Forest the following month and ensured the team remained mathematically safe in the Premier League on the final day of the match, despite having four points deducted for breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules . After finishing 17th in the 2023-24 season and navigating his new team through off-field turmoil, Nuno has somehow managed to turn a small squad into a cohesive unit in the space of 18 months.

There is a parallel to Claudio Ranieri’s tenure at Leicester City, after the famous itinerant coach had a truly disastrous spell as coach of the Greek national team. The Italian was in charge for just four months and four games for Greece, which suffered one draw and three defeats under his leadership.

A humiliating 1-0 defeat in a Euro 2016 qualifier against the Faroe Islands in November 2014 ended everything prematurely. Ranieri later openly described his decision to take the Greece job as a “mistake” after being tasked with rebuilding the national team’s fortunes in just 12 days and three coaching sessions.

The following year, Ranieri took over at Leicester, who had been battling relegation the previous season. But by the end of his first season at the King Power Stadium he had led them to an unlikely Premier League title win that shocked the world.

Are Forest on their way to “doing a Leicester”?

With 20 games played in the 2015/16 season, Leicester were in second place with 40 points; They then won the league with 81 points and were a huge 10 points ahead of second-placed Arsenal in the final standings.

Forest fans will no doubt find it tantalizing to read that their side are also 40 points clear after 20 games played. Arsenal’s better goal difference means they are only third instead of second in the table.

Leicester’s next five games were: Tottenham (A), Aston Villa (A), Stoke City (H), Manchester City (A), Arsenal (A). They scored 13 of 15 available points in this game series.

Forest are on a run that on paper should look a little more favorable in their next five league games: Liverpool (H), Southampton (H), Bournemouth (A), Brighton & Hove Albion (H), Fulham (A). So it’s entirely possible that Nuno’s side can stay on track in this run, or at least keep up with Leicester’s points total.

Of course, there is still a lot of football to be played and as Forest have proven countless times in the past, everything could go dramatically wrong from here. Nevertheless, there is reason to dream at City Ground – and that hasn’t been the case for a long time.

What are the chances?

Leicester City were famously labeled over 500,000 underdogs (5,000 to 1) to win the Premier League ahead of the 2015/16 season, before doing just that. While their miraculous title win means bookmakers may never offer such high odds again, Forest understandably didn’t have much chance of winning the league, having only just avoided relegation to the Championship last season.

According to ESPN BET, the Reds were complete underdogs at +100,000 (1,000 to 1) and won the Premier League title at the start of the season. They also had odds of +10,000 (100 to 1) to finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League, and odds of +8,000 (80 to 1) to finish in the top six and to secure some sort of European qualification, +800 (8 at +175 (1.75 to 1) they were among the favorites to avoid relegation. What a difference six months makes.

What pedigree does Forest have when it comes to title races?

Forest have experience when it comes to staging title fights – although it has to be said that none of this is particularly new.

Reminiscent of the last time they won six games in a row in the top flight, Forest enjoyed one of their first major title runs as they pressured Manchester United throughout the 1966-67 season in the old First Division. However, a humiliating 2-1 defeat to Southampton in their penultimate game ended their cup hopes.

There are a handful of other examples of Forest keeping pace with the league leaders before falling, and that is perhaps why the First Division championship won under legendary manager Brian Clough in 1977/78 remains the only top -Title is that won in the club’s 160-year history.

Clough led Forest back to the top flight as Second Division champions in 1976/77 and amazingly won the First Division title the following season. He remained unbeaten in the second half of the season and finished seven points clear of Liverpool at the top. Clough’s wondermen then won back-to-back European Cups in 1978/79 and 1979/80 with two 1-0 victories over Malmö and Hamburger SV, enjoying a wonderful flowering of domestic and continental success.