Nottingham Forest manager Vitor Pereira has expressed frustration over his side’s performance after they suffered a 1-0 home defeat to Denmark side Midtjylland at home in their Europa League Round of 16 first leg on Thursday.
The Premier League side were the better side for most of the encounter, but struggled to find the finishing touch in front of goal.
The Tricky Trees conceded a late header from Cho Gue-Sung, leaving them with much work to do ahead of the second leg next week.
Forest suffer first leg defeat to Midtjylland
Nottingham Forest suffered a 3-2 defeat at home to Midtjylland when both sides met in October during the league-phase and hoped to get their revenge in this encounter.
The game was played out in heavy conditions with heavy rain and strong wind affecting the condition of the City Ground.
Murillo cleared an effort off the line in the early exchanges, before Forest began to exert their dominance and tested the visitor’s goalkeeper with several attempts.
Nigerian defender Ola Aina almost broke the deadlock, but his effort was unluckily blocked by his own teammate, Morgan Gibbs-White.
Cho grabbed the winner in the 80th minute, as Forest failed to score once again despite having 22 attempts on goal in the match.
All is now set for next week’s second leg in Denmark, where Midtjylland have not suffered defeat across all competitions this season.
What Pereira said after the match
Speaking after the defeat, Pereira was disappointed at the result but believes his side still have the chance to turn the tie in their favour.
“It is difficult to explain. We create so many chances to score a goal. Even if we draw, in my opinion, it was not fair”, Pereira said.
“The two chances they create, they score a goal. But we had enough time and I believe we had the quality to win the game.
“If you create a chance and we don’t score, in the end we did everything to score. We did everything and were just missing the goals.
“I’m very frustrated that we did not score and they came here to draw but they won the game. I try to keep the spirit and prepare for the next game against Fulham”, the former Wolves boss added.
“Even the rain played against us! The best moment we are playing, creating and the dynamic is good, the rain came.
“It was difficult with the rain. As I said before, keep the spirit and go there with the mentality to win the game. We will see. Now it is time to recover mentally.”
Meanwhile, attention will shift to Sunday’s Premier League clash against Fulham, as they hope to bounce back to winning ways.
