Dean Henderson keeps out Brighton to lift Nottingham Forest off the bottom

This was a frustrating, sapping 90 minutes of football and Steve Cooper is unlikely to care. Nottingham Forest need points and earned one here with a robust defensive performance that rendered irrelevant the fact they barely mounted an attack of note. They are off the bottom for now after riding their luck for spells of the first half and expertly managing most of the second. For Brighton the concerns are obvious: their old impotence has returned and, having failed to oversee a goal in their past three games, Roberto De Zerbi still awaits his first win.

Cooper emerged from the tunnel three minutes before his players, saluting the boisterous away support before taking his seat. Whatever the reason for being so early, it could not have been in order to sit comfortably. Forest are rarely able to do that and were on the back foot in the opening exchanges, conceding two quick corners and struggling to make anything stick from their morsels of possession.

All the same 12 minutes passed before they were seriously stretched, Leandro Trossard checking inside before forcing Dean Henderson to palm a well-struck curler over his bar. When Solly March sped down the right shortly afterwards but failed to look up and feed an onrushing Pascal Gross, the iffy final-third decisions that dogged Brighton’s defeats by Spurs and Brentford loomed large.

Adam Lallana, starting for the first time under De Zerbi, intelligently found a pocket of space in the box but was quickly shut down. His head coach, an agitated touchline presence, swivelled in frustration and reached for a water bottle. The home defenders were not always calming him, twice dwelling on the ball long enough for the buzzy Brennan Johnson to briefly threaten punishment.

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