Nottingham Forest had just won their first Premier League away point since 1999 but their manager, Steve Cooper, walked into a silent, deflated dressing room at Goodison Park. His players’ post-match reaction was another sign of his team’s rapid progress. The raucous Forest faithful were in the midst of telling the ex-Derby manager Frank Lampard he was getting sacked in the morning when their other target, the former Leicester winger Demarai Gray, pounced on a superb Jordan Pickford pass to rescue Everton’s first point of the season in the 88th minute. Brennan Johnson had put the visitors on the cusp of a second successive league win seven minutes earlier and, but for a late defensive lapse, they would have condemned Everton to a damaging third consecutive defeat.
Amid Forest’s disappointment, however, was an encouraging performance in which the club’s record signing, Morgan Gibbs-White, impressed as a second half substitute. Cooper rightly embraced the positives.
