Nottingham Forest 1-0 Crystal Palace: Player ratings as Forest earn crucial win
Nottingham Forest have moved up to 18th in the Premier League table, and one point off safety, with a win over Crystal Palace at the City Ground.
The deciding goal came from the impressive Morgan Gibbs-White, who stabbed home a 57th minute winner.
After a rather stodgy opening 15 minutes the first real chance of the game would fall to Brennan Johnson. The Welsh international was played through on goal on the right hand side of the penalty area by Gibbs-White, but dragged his subsequent shot on goal just wide of the far post.
Unfortunately that chance didn't exactly spark the game into life, as neither side looked remotely capable of doing anything in the final third.
That was until Forest captain Joe Worrall gifted Crystal Palace a chance to take the lead. The defender was left bamboozled by a quick turn from Wilfried Zaha inside the box, and promptly pulled him to the ground.
Zaha then stepped up to drag his resulting spot kick embarrassingly wide of the post. The penalty was a rather perfect summation of a rather terrible half of football at the City Ground.
Thankfully the start of the second half was much more entertaining than the whole first half, with Gibbs-White finding the back of the net in the 54th minute.
The former Wolves man reacted first from after Vicente Guaita saved a decent Johnson strike to tap home the opener. The goal, initially ruled out for offside, was given after a lengthy VAR check adjudged that Marc Guehi just kept Gibbs-White onside.
Despite a few attacking changes from the visitors, it was actually Forest who looked most likely to score the second goal of the game after going up 1-0. The home side were able to catch Palace out on a few occasions on the counter attack, with the most obvious chance they created being one which Jesse Lingard missed. The attacking midfielder was brilliantly teed up by Renan Lodi inside the penalty area, but he could only curled wide with his shot on goal.
Nottingham Forest player ratings
GK: Dean Henderson (6); RB: Serge Aurier (7); CB: Joe Worrall (7); CB: Willy Boly (6); LB: Renan Lodi (7); CM: Ryan Yates (6); CM: Remo Freuler (6); CM: Cheikhou Kouyaté (6); AM: Morgan Gibbs-White (8); ST: Jesse Lingard (6); ST: Brennan Johnson (6).
Subs: Jack Colback (6), Sam Surridge (6), Lewis O'Brien (N/A), Neco Williams (6).
Crystal Palace player ratings
GK: Vicente Guaita (7); RB: Nathaniel Clyne (6); CB: Joachim Andersen (7); CB: Marc Guehi (7); LB: Tyrick Mitchell (6); CM: Jeffrey Schlupp (6); CM: Cheick Doucoure (6); RM: Jordan Ayew (6); AM: Michael Olise (6); LM: Eberechi Eze (6); ST: Wilfried Zaha (6).
Subs: Jean-Philippe Mateta (6); Joel Ward (6), Will Hughes (6), Malcom Ebiowei (6), Odsonne Edouard (6).