Morgan Gibbs-White: Glasner blame home record on past struggles

Standfirst: three key facts

• Nottingham Forest have not won a Premier League match at the City Ground since April.
• Morgan Gibbs-White leads all English players in the Premier League for goal involvements in 2026, with 18.
• WhoScored has Forest conceding the fewest expected goals of any side in the division this season.

Nottingham Forest home form: how it happened

Nottingham Forest have gone five months without a Premier League win on home soil, a run that stretches back to April. Every fixture at the City Ground since has ended in a draw or a defeat, even as the team has picked up points elsewhere.

The numbers make the pattern hard to explain away. WhoScored’s expected goals model has Forest conceding fewer expected goals than any other side in the league this season. That is not a defence collapsing under pressure. It is a team that keeps finding ways to drop points in front of its own crowd.

The eye test backs up the numbers. Forest have defended set pieces and transitions well throughout the season, yet home matches keep slipping into stalemate or late setbacks that the underlying data does not explain.

The contrast with Forest’s away form and continental record only sharpens the question. A year ago, on 24 September 2025, Forest drew 2-2 with Real Betis in Seville, showing they could match a strong European side away from home. Our full report on Forest’s home form covers the run in full, fixture by fixture, and it is worth reading alongside the raw numbers here: our full report on Forest’s home form.

The expert angle: heaviness of past relegation fights creates home block

Head coach Oliver Glasner has his own theory about the run, and it has nothing to do with tactics or personnel. Oliver Glasner told the Nottingham Post: “It is not just the home record. The negative home record is maybe the consequence of this. When you are fighting against relegation for more or less the entire season, things happen. I think we all know this from our own lives, that when things happen in the past and then maybe a similar situation comes, you remember these things.”

That framing matters because it shifts responsibility away from individual errors and onto a shared history. Glasner is asking his squad to separate this season’s table position from the fear that defined recent ones.

Glasner is pointing at memory rather than method. Forest spent long stretches of recent seasons fighting to stay up, and City Ground crowds grew used to tension rather than comfort. His argument is that those nights have left a mark players carry into games that no longer carry the same stakes.

It is a psychological explanation, not a tactical one, and Glasner is careful to frame it as his own reading of the situation rather than a fixed diagnosis. Whether it holds up will show in results, not theory.

What happens next for Forest and Gibbs-White

Nothing about the run points to a change in personnel or approach; Glasner has offered an explanation, not an alarm. The underlying defensive numbers suggest the fixes needed are mental rather than structural.

Morgan Gibbs-White remains the clearest reason for optimism. His 18 goal involvements in 2026 top the Premier League chart for English players, a return few at the club would have predicted from midfield. If Forest can carry that individual form into home fixtures, the run at the City Ground will end on its own.

For now, Forest’s away results and their defensive metrics tell one story. Their home record tells another. Closing that gap, on Glasner’s own account, is as much about what happened before as what happens next.

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