Nottingham Forest were beaten 3-1 by Tottenham in the Premier League this afternoon and Ryan Yates was once again called upon as the captain of the team.
The defeat leaves Forest rooted in relegation trouble, with the team now only out of the relegation zone on goal difference.
In a week where Everton and Luton both got wins and Brentford drew, Forest really needed to get something positive in North London.
At half-time, the Reds had worked hard to be level at 1-1 and on another day Chris Wood doesn’t hit the post and Forest lead at the break.
It wasn’t to be, however, and Forest were left to rue a number of poor performances – not least from captain Yates who really struggled.
We scored him a 3/10 in our player ratings piece and Roy Keane also had some stern words for him during the half-time interval.
What Roy Keane said about Ryan Yates during Forest defeat
Well, this all came about when Yates felt James Maddison should have been sent off for appearing to stick a fist in the stomach of the Forest captain.
It was checked by VAR but the Tottenham star remained on the pitch and Simon Hooper gave Maddison and Yates a ticking off.
Keane has seen it all before with Yates at Forest. He was the assistant manager when Martin O’Neill was the manager at the City Ground and the midfielder was coming through the ranks.
He felt that incident was much of a do-about-nothing and admitted that he’d like to see Yates stay on his feet a little bit more often.
Keane said live on Sky Sports: “I’ve worked with Yates at Forest, really nice kid but every week, someone touches him and he goes down. He goes down far too easily, for such a decent lad, he needs to cut that out of his game.”
Yates performance leaves more questions than answers
This was a bit of a disaster for Yates as his Forest performance left a lot to be desired. It was quite something that he managed to stay on the pitch for 80 minutes of this one.
The 26-year-old didn’t cover himself in glory. He was slow to move the ball, wasteful in possession and had an uncanny knack of giving away silly fouls.
Yates, who made four fouls in the opening 13 minutes of this one would be wise to take note of what Keane is saying.
It sounds as though the man who used to coach Yates at Forest is a fan of the player but going down easily is an unwelcomed trait that he appears to be developing.
Forest won’t have their season defined by today’s result. For Yates, he needs to get himself sorted if he wants to keep his shirt and he will be keen to move on quickly from this showing.
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