Look only at the points column in the table as we approach the hollow core of March and you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a boring season in the Premier League.

Liverpool are now 15 points clear in the title race. Arsenal have a game in hand but realistically the trophy isn’t going anywhere but Anfield. Southampton are all but relegated at the other end, and Leicester City and Ipswich Town have offered no indication of the wherewithal to stay up. The relegation battle is petering out and Caesar isn’t even dead yet.

All that’s left when April gets things up and running again is the scrap for European places. Fortunately, there’s enough intrigue among the best of the rest to keep us hooked well into May. 2024/25 isn’t boring. It’s just that the meaty stuff is all happening between the Premier League’s extremities.

Peel away the outer layer of the league and there’s lots of tasty football flesh into which to sink your teeth.

Manchester City are still lethal on their day but have served up no title defence of any substance. Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United are 13th and 14th in the table respectively, thrillingly bad for the rest of us with ten matches remaining.

Aston Villa are still in the Champions League but seldom look robust enough to qualify for a second crack at it. Newcastle United and Fulham have been excellent in patches. AFC Bournemouth are riding the best team in their history right into Europe. Brighton & Hove Albion are above all of them.

Then, in third place, just four points behind Arsenal and two ahead of Chelsea, there’s the utterly fantastic Nottingham Forest. Boring season? Not a bit of it.

It’s easy for a couple of generations of neutral supporters to be enthused about Forest standing on the threshold of the Champions League simply because it’s Forest. They sit in a sort of sweet spot between provincial but traditional football club and historic achiever, a divide bridged, gloriously but briefly, by Brian Clough.

Yet there’s more to it than that. The prospect of Forest pulling off something special this season isn’t just exciting because of Clough and John McGovern and Trevor Francis and Frank Clark long ago, but because Nuno Espírito Santo and his players are anything but ordinary.

There are ten games left – one before the FA Cup quarter-final against Brighton & Hove Albion, nine after that. A mixed bag they may be in terms of degree of difficulty on paper, but Nuno will already be drilling into his players that Ipswich away in the next game is the same as Chelsea at home in the last one and everything else in between.

Out of chaos, only beautiful order

It’s fair to say that Forest have settled down. Owner Evangelos Marinakis, rarely backwards in coming forwards, didn’t half-arse the club’s spending after promotion back to the Premier League but there were question marks over their transfer strategy.

There were mistakes but it’s also clear that some of the post-Wembley spending spree has paid off and been supplemented since by good, measured recruitment that’s working hand in hand with Nuno getting a tune out of players even if some of them cost a pretty penny.

Forest’s acquisitions weren’t unfancied, exactly, but they were in many cases expensive enough to raise an eyebrow. Marinakis has backed his managers but it’s Nuno who’s built the platform from which some terrific players have justified their price tags.

Callum Hudson-Odoi, scorer of Forest’s winner against Manchester City at the City Ground, springs to mind. Forest brought him in from Chelsea after a loan spell out of the Premier League spotlight and indeed the England set-up with Bayer Leverkusen.

Fellow Chelsea graduate Ola Aina, now 28, was signed initially on a one-year contract from Torino. Anthony Elanga moved from Manchester United at the same time. These are fine players with solid reputations who are now absolutely key contributors in one of the best teams in the Premier League.

Morgan Gibbs-White is on another level entirely. Always seemingly destined for big things, the attacking midfielder was nevertheless considered a risk for the money when he was signed from Wolverhampton Wanderers in the summer of 2022.

He could eventually cost Forest more than £40 million in transfer fee and add-ons alone and it’s no exaggeration to say he’s already paid it back and then some.

Gibbs-White has emerged as a genuine leading light in the Premier League, a creative and intelligent powerhouse, as well as a leader at 25. The number of teams in Europe who wouldn’t be improved by his presence is vanishingly small.

Style in substance

33-year-old Chris Wood is having the season of his life. He’s scored 18 goals in 28 Premier League matches this season, already his best top-flight return ever with many more to come between now and the end of May. His expected goals (xG) total in 2024/25 is 10.9 and he’s out-performing it by more than any other player.

He’s the eighth-highest scorer in the top five European leagues as well as the fourth-highest in the Premier League. Only three players in the division have a higher percentage of shots on target and none of them is in his league in anything other than name.

Nuno’s Forest are an unusual tactical case. Nuno wraps a lot of risk up in an approach that smothers opponents. It might be pragmatic, to a degree, but it’s not negative.

The average positions of Forest’s players reveal the manager’s enormous level of faith in his central defenders. Nikola Milenković and Murillo have formed an exceptional partnership in the furnace of a system that trusts them to handle exposure behind an advanced midfield line.

That’s not a function of an all-out pressing team – Forest have attempted fewer tackles in the attacking third than any other team – but it’s a system that works. At the time of writing, Forest have conceded just 33 goals in their 28 matches, fewer than everyone but Crystal Palace (also 33), Liverpool and Arsenal.

They only have the tenth-highest tally of goals scored despite out-scoring their xG (the sixth-lowest) by more than any other team in the Premier League. Forest are efficient in front of goal, even with the third-longest average shot distance. That’s simply a matter of quality players who shoot well.

No accident and no coincidence

With potency up front, a tactical base from which they can attack in swarms, and top-level players on the break, Forest have taken the Premier League’s lowest average possession, fewest passes (attempted and completed), lowest pass completion rate and fewest passes into the final third, and turned them into a probable Champions League place.

Another response to a quick glance at the table might be to nod approvingly at Forest punching above their weight. They’re not. This Forest team is competitive, differently but genuinely, and the rewards beckon as the end of the season appears on the horizon.

The much discussed failings of others are helping Nuno’s cause, but Forest are the real deal. It’s impossible to know where in the mix they’d be with the likes of Manchester United, Spurs and Chelsea firing on all cylinders, but you can bet your bottom dollar they’d be in there somewhere.

Notwithstanding the Marinakis factor – they are, ultimately, part of a multi-club group with a wealthy owner, like so many others – Forest being in prime position for a return to European football’s top club competition is an enjoyable diversion from the norm.

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