Nottingham Forest are out of the relegation places. That is the only fact from Portman Road that will please them, and even that one comes with an asterisk, because a side that dominated the second half as thoroughly as Forest did on Friday night should have taken all three points rather than one. Ipswich Town climbed to ninth. Forest climbed off the bottom three. Neither manager sounded like a man who had got what he came for.
Neco Williams gave the visitors a lead inside 13 minutes, finishing after Daniel Muñoz had set him up, and for a quarter of an hour the game ran away from the hosts. Then Ipswich settled, and Julio Enciso levelled four minutes before half-time. After the break Forest had the ball, the territory and the chances, and still could not turn any of it into a second goal.
The Diop decision that shaped the night
The flashpoint arrived when Issa Diop brought down James McAtee. Referee and VAR went through a check for denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity, the referee went to the monitor, and the outcome was a yellow card rather than a red. The Premier League match centre explanation was that McAtee had knocked the ball to the right of the goal, which changed the nature of the chance.
Oliver Glasner did not pretend to agree. "I felt during the game it was a clear red card," the Forest manager said. "I think he was preparing his finish by going a bit right. I think it was the wrong decision but we couldn't have played a more dominant second half. We created enough chances to decide the game and that's why I will never blame the referee." Diop himself was unmoved: "I went to tackle because I saw Leif Davies covering. He puts the ball wide and Leif was there to cover. I don't think it's a red. I was quite confident about that."
Gary O'Neil's reading was closer to the officials'. "I saw Leif running, he is fast so I thought if it was a foul then Leif would have caught McAtee," the Ipswich manager said. "I thought it was a well-worked out decision by the officials. I think we had cover so it would be difficult to say it was a denial of a goal scoring opportunity. Sometimes they go your way and sometimes they don't. Tonight it did."
Forest keep creating and keep not scoring
Morgan Gibbs-White has had this conversation a few times now. "We have had so many good performances recently but never enough to get the three points and get over the line," he said. "The second half, we were completely dominant and we should have won the game in my eyes."
Asked why the goals are not arriving, he was candid about what is happening on the training ground. "This is a question we have been asking ourselves in training, we have been doing shooting drills and if you had seen how they were going in yesterday. But they just were not in the game. It is a topic of discussion and it is not good enough but I am proud of the boys for keeping going."
Ipswich dug in and took what was on offer
O'Neil was honest about how his side got through the second half, which involved rather less football than he would like. "We were never good enough with the ball and it ended up being Forest direct balls that took control," he said. "I took the decision to take less risk in the second half, dig in and fight. It felt like the lesser of two evils."
He also used the result to make a wider point about where his newly promoted team sit. "Anyone who thinks it's going to be easy can watch tonight's game back, because Forest are down the bottom of the league but they're a top side with top players," he said. "They should be a good side, the amount of money they have spent and well coached." Glasner, meanwhile, is asking his players and everyone else for time. "It's a question of time and maybe in a few weeks you will be asking why we are scoring so many goals."
Match facts: Ipswich Town 1-1 Nottingham Forest, Premier League, Portman Road, Friday 23 October 2026. Attendance 29,198. Half-time 1-1. Scorers: Neco Williams 13' (assist Daniel Muñoz) for Forest, Julio Enciso 41' for Ipswich. Issa Diop was shown a yellow card following a VAR review for a possible DOGSO offence. Ipswich move up to ninth; Forest climb out of the relegation zone. Source: BBC Sport.
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