I was at Nottingham Forest vs Fulham to watch Nuno make a serious error in the 74th minute

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Nottingham Forest took on Fulham yesterday in the Premier League aiming to extend their unbeaten run of form to six games at the start of the season.

Sadly, things ended in vain as Forest were left – once again – to rue some rotten luck with VAR and were beaten 1-0 after a Raul Jimenez penalty shortly after half-time.

Still, it’s a decent start to the season for Forest who have taken nine points from six games to offer improvement from the club’s first two seasons in the Premier League.

Nuno Espirito Santo can’t escape criticism for yesterday’s defeat. His decision to start with four central midfielders backfired, with Forest offering very little to trouble Bernd Leno in the Fulham goal.

At the City Ground, it proved a tough watch for the Forest supporters and although the game plan was working at the break, something had to change to get the Reds to create more.

What happened in the 74th minute was pretty unthinkable and the Forest head coach might wish he could have that moment in the match again.

• READ MORE: Match of the Day pundits in total agreement about decision in Nottingham Forest game

Nuno Espirito Santo made 74th-minute mistake vs Fulham

With the Cottagers leading 1-0, they were never going to throw too much forward as the game petered out with the points in the bag for the Londoners.

As a result, Espirito Santo chose to leave Ryan Yates on as the only central midfielder, with Jota Silva dropping into that area of the pitch when Forest didn’t have possession.

However, there was a problem with this decision. Okay, Yates was the captain but one of the problems was that he was on a yellow card which limited his ability to be able to break things up in the closing stages.

Another was that in taking James Ward-Prowse off, Forest weren’t going to have the luxury of a world-class set-piece taker in the ranks as the Reds threw everything at it.

Ward-Prowse should have remained on the pitch and it’s no surprise that Forest won several corners and free-kicks in dangerous areas out wide once the midfielder had gone off.

The player isn’t immune to being subbed as nobody is. However, in this game, Forest were always going to need something special and Ward-Prowse has that in his locker from dead ball situations.

Forest have to find a system to get Ward-Prowse involved for 90 minutes

The Reds signed Ward-Prowse on loan for the season from West Ham and during the 2023/24 campaign, he scored seven times and registered 11 assists.

He’s the sort of player who can make things happen from midfield and yesterday he even had some good moments from open play.

Ward-Prowse finished the game with 92.9% of his passes going to Forest players and he also completed three successful crosses, according to Who Scored.

He was actually doing pretty well defensively too, winning two blocks and drawing one foul from the opposition during his time on the pitch.

Okay, there were still some areas of his game that he could improve on but it felt like a huge mistake for Espirito Santo to take off the player who is a magician at set pieces.

His job now is to find a system that he can depend upon when the chips are down and Forest are trying to force a way back into the game.

Ward-Prowse can’t keen on getting subbed when Forest are still in with a shout of points and hopefully, we can see the midfielder play 90 minutes soon.