Arsenal beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 at the City Ground on Sunday, October 18, in front of 30,893 fans, thanks to an 80th-minute goal from Noni Madueke that took a deflection off Jair Cunha and beat goalkeeper Matz Sels, NBC Sports and ESPN reported. The win moves Arsenal to second in the Premier League on 18 points from seven games, three behind Manchester City, who have won all seven of theirs, and two ahead of Brighton, according to NBC Sports. Forest, with one win, two draws and four defeats, have 5 points and sit 18th, in the bottom three. Arsenal now face Bayern Munich in the Champions League in midweek and then host Everton, while Forest travel to Ipswich Town on Friday.
There is a strong case that this was the kind of win a title challenger needs. Arsenal have won six of their seven league games and have conceded five goals, the same as Brighton and fewer than City’s seven, ESPN’s table shows. They controlled the game with about 75 percent of the possession, according to NBC Sports, and Declan Rice had 113 touches and completed 57 of 58 passes, with one assist and three chances created. Manager Mikel Arteta said it was “something we didn’t do the last two seasons, which was win the game,” and Madueke said: “This place is so hard to come to… We showed a champion’s spirit here.” Forest’s Bruno Guimarães won 10 of 12 duels in 66 minutes, so Arsenal won a physical contest on a difficult ground, and they did it by keeping Forest from scoring.
The case against reading too much into the result is also in the numbers. Arsenal managed only one shot on target and an expected-goals figure of 1.07, which is a modest total for 75 percent of the ball, and the winning goal came from a deflection in the 80th minute rather than from a clear chance. Their 11 goals in seven games are fewer than City’s 19, Brighton’s 23 and Chelsea’s 17. They have also already lost once and trail City by three points, while Brighton, who have scored more and lost only once, are just two points behind them. Arteta himself conceded that “the margins were really small,” which is a reminder that a single deflected goal separated the sides.
The result matters because Arsenal now go into a Champions League night against Bayern Munich on the back of a league win, while Forest slip into the bottom three with an away trip to Ipswich next. For the Premier League title race, a three-point gap to City is small enough to be closed by a single result, and Arsenal’s defence, with five goals against, is level with Brighton’s as the best among the top six clubs. For English clubs in Europe, how Arsenal perform against Bayern will be watched closely.
Arsenal won narrowly and stay second, three points behind Manchester City. Whether the thin margins are a sign of resilience or a warning will be clearer after the Bayern game. For now the table, not the performance statistics, tells the story: six wins from seven games, five goals conceded, and a place just behind the only perfect team in England.
