Oliver Glasner absolved Dean Henderson of blame after the Crystal Palace goalkeeper’s second-half blunder handed Nottingham Forest a hard-fought victory. Henderson allowed Chris Wood’s first-time strike to slip through his despairing dive to extend Palace’s miserable start to the season.
The game was in the balance when Wood tried his luck from 20 yards following Trevoh Chalobah’s weak headed clearance from Àlex Moreno’s hopeful ball. But Henderson was slow to get down and then allowed Wood’s shot to squirm under his right arm, just six days after he returned to England’s starting lineup for their Nations League win in Finland.
“He tried to apologise but I didn’t allow it,” the Crystal Palace manager said. “It’s not to blame anyone. He made so many big saves for us this season and last season. It happens. It’s sports and we’re all human.
“He doesn’t need to apologise for the mistake. It’s about how we deal with the mistake. I don’t expect an easy game against Tottenham [on Sunday], they are very attacking, we know the challenges we have so we will need Dean and he will help us for sure.”
Wood is keeping some good company these days. His fifth goal of the season means only Erling Haaland and Cole Palmer have scored more than the 16 Premier League goals he has plundered since Nuno Espírito Santo took charge at the City Ground just before last Christmas.
The New Zealand forward will be 33 by the time Nuno, missing from the touchline here as he started a three-game suspension, celebrates his anniversary but celebrating they surely will be. Thanks in no small part to Wood’s goals, Forest are nestling happily in eighth place in the table.
In stark contrast Palace remain entrenched in the relegation zone after their joint-worst start to a Premier League season.
Wood had already seen three cast-iron chances go begging in the first half before he dispatched the shot that won this game. The strike means he joins Bryan Roy and Stan Collymore as the only players to have reached the 20-goal mark in the Premier League for Forest. His celebrations did not end there as he revealed he is expecting to become a father again with the footballer’s customary thumb in mouth and ball up the shirt routine.
“Amazing,” Nuno said. “We are delighted with him, and not just for his goals. [It’s] all his actions in the game, how he leads the team and the impact he has in the dressing room. He is a very experienced player for the young lads [to learn off].”
With Nuno sitting in a stand that also housed captain Morgan Gibbs-White and James Ward-Prowse, both suspended, while owner Evangelos Marinakis serves a five-match stadium ban, there was a sense of injustice among Forest fans that fuelled their team’s energetic start.
Yet there was a hole in front of the Forest defence into which Palace probed and so nearly profited from in the early stages. Eberichi Eze, playing in a free role just off, or even at times ahead of Eddie Nketiah, waltzed into this space and curled a 20-yarder just wide.
Forest had the better of possession but Nketiah almost scored when he foraged into the same vacant area, in which neither Ryan Yates nor Nicolás Domínguez were stamping their defensive presence, and the £25m signing from Arsenal swerved his shot against the outside of a post.
Yates also struck the woodwork at the other end with a header and just after half-time Eze forced Matz Sels into a superb fingertip save, the ball cannoning off the top of the bar.
Then Moreno came to Forest’s rescue as he threw his body in the way of Will Hughes’s shot after Nketiah had done brilliantly down the left wing and pulled the ball back.
Then came Wood’s big moment at the expense of Henderson. Goodness knows, he had been knocking on the door enough. Another win at Leicester on Friday and Forest would go fifth. Heady times indeed.
