Crystal Palace rallies past dominant Nottingham Forest to win 3-1 at Selhurst Park

There were barely two minutes on the clock when Dan Ndoye put Nottingham Forest ahead with a curling finish from inside the box, and everything pointed to a tough afternoon for Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park. But between the end of the first half and the start of the second, the home side flipped the match on its head with three goals in just 18 minutes to seal a 3-1 win that leaves them with a big result in the Premier League.

Forest had controlled much of the first half, creating clear chances through Murillo and Morgan Gibbs-White, and held the lead for a good stretch of play. The visitors were up 0-1, but right before the break, in the 40th minute, Daichi Kamada leveled things with a left-footed strike from the center of the box, finding the inside of the left post off an assist from Quinten Timber. The 1-1 scoreline at halftime already changed the complexion of the match.

The second half got underway and Crystal Palace wasted no time striking again: in the 48th minute, Jefferson Lerma rose for a close-range header to make it 2-1, finishing off an Adam Wharton cross that followed a corner kick. Ten minutes later, Yeremy Pino stretched the lead with a right-footed finish from the center of the box to make it 3-1, which held up as the final score. Pino, incidentally, picked up a yellow card shortly after for overdoing his celebration.

A game of mismatched numbers

What stands out is that Crystal Palace did not dominate the run of play. Nottingham Forest held more possession, took more shots and had more clear-cut chances, but could not turn that edge into goals. The post-match numbers make that clear.

That gap also shows up in the xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots: the model credits Nottingham Forest with 4.093 expected goals against 2.537 for Crystal Palace. In other words, the visitors generated considerably more danger than the final score suggests, but the home side's efficiency, three goals from fewer clear chances, ended up tipping the balance.

This runs counter to what we had projected before kickoff, when we gave Crystal Palace a 40% chance of winning, a 31% chance of a draw and a 29% chance of a Forest win, with expected goals of 1.30 for the home side and 1.08 for the visitors. The final score ended up more lopsided than expected, and the match itself played out with a different script than anticipated, with Forest generating far more offensive volume than projected but unable to capitalize on it.

What it means in the standings

In the table, this result carries weight. Crystal Palace came in with seven points from six matches played, with two wins, one draw and three losses, while Nottingham Forest had five points from the same number of matches, with one win, two draws and three defeats. The gap between the two sides before this match was just two points, and with this result Crystal Palace pulls a bit further away from a direct rival near the bottom of the table.

For Nottingham Forest, the takeaway is bittersweet: they controlled the ball, took more shots and created more clear chances, but left Selhurst Park empty-handed. For Crystal Palace, on the other hand, the comeback built between the end of the first half and the start of the second, with Kamada, Lerma and Pino leading the way, is the big story of the day.