IT HAS taken 12 months, but Chris Wood’s dream of being a title-deciding hitman might not be too wide of the mark after all.
Not in the way the much-travelled striker thought, mind.
Yet come the end of the season, perhaps the strike which decides where the Premier League flag is flying.
Yet if it hadn’t been for the most embarrassing and awful miss of Erling Haaland’s career, Wood’s moment to remember would have been totally irrelevant. But more of that later.
First, the moment that made Wood a Forest hero – and probably an even bigger one 140 miles south at the Emirates.
A year ago Wood had just gone to Newcastle as part of the Toon revolution, with the initial aim of keeping them in the top flight.
This season the target was way different – like shooting them towards the summit. And one which died when he was farmed out on loan to Forest last month.
Wood was making only his third appearance since moving to the City Ground, and City – for all they were only a goal to the good – were strolling it when he came off the bench on 79 minutes.
Yet five minutes later he was tapping in the unlikeliest of levellers that earned Forest an unbelievable point, and left Pep Guardiola stony-faced and slumped on the touchline.
All over the field City’s players were absolutely shell-shocked. And none more than Haaland, the deadliest hitman in Europe, but yesterday guilty of the biggest clanger.
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Keeper Kaylor Navas spilled Phil Foden’s low drive and the Norwegian should really have buried the first rebound instead of striking into the ground and against the bar.
No matter, you thought, when it came back to him for a second time and he steadied himself… before driving into the rafters of the stand from bang in front.
For half a second there was total silence around the ground, before Forest fans erupted in a mixture of laughter and roars. City supporters were simply stunned into silence.
And how costly it ultimately proved, as chance after chance went begging and you began to suspect that for all their dominance, maybe it would indeed be one of those days.
I’ll say it was, as Brennan Johnson burst down the right, Morgan Gibbs-White took over to drill in a cross, and there was Wood to sidefoot home.
Even then it needed confirmation of VAR before they could celebrate fully. But boy, didn’t they do just that.
For Guardiola, it was the icing on a pretty miserable afternoon, which had seen him yellow carded for a rant at fourth official Josh Smith.
Pep had lost the plot when Haaland tumbled in the box after Joe Worrall laid the merest of right hands on him, and ref Scott waved away the penalty claims.
Given the size and strength of the City forward, he certainly did seem to go down very easily. Yet he was also in behind the Forest man, so why do so if he could have stayed up?
But it really was one of those days for City. One in which they enjoyed 87 per cent of possession in the first half, albeit hardly peppering the Forest goal.
Back in August, they had rattled in half a dozen as Steve Cooper’s side struggled to find their feet back in the top flight.
This time it took City until a couple of minutes before the break to find a way through. Mind you, what a cracker it was…even if it was hardly Costa Rican keeper Navas’ finest hour.
Foden, back in the starting line-up for the first time in a month – and boy, wasn’t he making up for lost time – drifted a corner that was glanced to Jack Grealish on the right.
Grealish dithered and danced his way to the edge of the box, before rolling a cute square ball to Bernardo on his left, some 25 yards out.
He couldn’t have struck it better and it arrowed beyond a flailing Navas – although above his right arm, rather than the top corner, and he should at least have got a hand to it.
Not that even the most one-eyed of Forest fans could argue Guardiola’s men didn’t deserve it.
And for so long, it only seemed a case of how many would it end up, as Forest were left to fight a stubborn resistance, yet City struggled to find a way through.
Rodri headed a gimme wide from bang in front, while Bernardo had whistled a long-ranger just wide in an ominous portent of what was to come.
Then Foden broke behind everyone as Ilkay Gundogan picked him out, yet tried to tee up Haaland for a tap-in, with only Navas to beat.
But when he side-footed a ball left, Brazilian Felipe – Forest’s outstanding performer – got his reward for refusing to give up on a lost cause, and booted it behind.
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To be fair, no one in a red shirt gave it up as a lost cause either. And boy, didn’t they get a handsome reward in the end?
The pendulum, you could say, has very much swung back in Arsenal’s favour once again…
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
