Can Forest Lay The Ghost Of Midtjylland To Rest?

Tonight Forest will look for a first course of revenge against the Danish set piece specialists.

On what should have been a fantastic night for the club, instead we all remember the 2nd October 2025 for all the wrong reasons. Forest took 22 shots, but they were no match for the 8 shots by the visitors, all of which came from set piece scenarios (including the final nail in the coffin from a Forest corner.

No image sums Postecoglou’s reign up better than this one.

Sorry to remind everyone, but below are the clips of each shot by Forest’s Danish opponents. There’s nothing fancy in these clips, just some good old-fashioned set pieces that Mikel Arteta & Nicolas Jover would be proud of. Forest simply have to defend these situations much better across the next two games.

On the bright side, I think a two-legged game against opponents like this is much more beneficial to Forest than a one-match shootout. As bad as Forest’s defending was on that night, they could and perhaps should have scored more goals - you’d hope over 2 games that Forest’s quality ‘should’ see them through.

What Does The Data Say?

It will come as no surprise to anybody ahead of tomorrow night that Midtjylland are one of the strongest set piece teams in Europe. But what’s interesting is their reliance on set pieces in the domestic game is nowhere near as high as it is in European encounters.

23.72% of Midtjylland’s expected goals come from set piece situations - this ranks 2nd in the Danish top flight. The actual figure though, of 10.25, is the highest in the league by over 1.5. Remember that domestically Midtjylland are one of the strongest teams, so they’re able to impose their quality on opponents much easier than in Europe. Therefore their reliance on set pieces, whilst high, is nowhere near has large as it is on the continental stage.

A good comparison here is with Arsenal, who’s percentage of xG from set piece situations is 30.19%, ranking 6th in the Premier League. Forest’s figure is 19.99%, ranking 17th.

If we look just at shot attempts, Midtjylland do rank 1st in Danish top flight - with 31.88% of their total shot attempts coming from set piece situations. This is similar to that of Arsenal (30.95%). It points toward a team that still creates heavily from set pieces, but unsurprisingly finds it much easier to create high quality chances from open play when facing Danish opposition.

Domestically at least, Midtjylland’s goal return from set pieces is actually pretty low compared to others in their league, with 19.30% of their goals coming from set pieces so far this season.

What’s really interesting here though, is the kind of set piece they’ve been having the most success with. Despite the share only ranking 4th, they’ve still scored 11 set piece goals in the league, which is 3 higher than the next best team. The big difference? 6 of those goals have come from throw-ins, that’s 1 more than the rest of the Danish Superliga combined!

If we switch it up a little and just look at their Europa League data (from the League Phase onward), this is where Midtjylland really start to try and press their advantage over other teams. They don’t have the resources and financial backing of many of their competitors in Europe, so instead they focus on their strengths - it’s clear that it’s brought them plenty of success in their European campaign.

Set pieces make up a massive 45.84% of Midtjylland’s total expected goals. This figure is 6.26 xG, ranking 2nd of all 36 teams that made the League Phase. The team in 1st place? Well, surprisingly it’s actually our very own Nottingham Forest, with a figure of 6.53 (representing 30.40% of xG) - but remember, Forest have played 2 extra games in the competition.

It’s a similar story if we look at shot attempts too - 40.21% of Midtjylland’s shots come from set piece situations. They’ve generated 9 shots from throw-ins, ranking 2nd in the competition. Forest’s figure here is 31.10%.

Digging a little deeper here specifically into corners, Midtjylland have created a shot from 47.6% of their corners - Forest on the other hand can beat that with a figure of 55.6%. What this suggests is that Forest can put a couple of decent routines together (and perhaps more importantly defend much better than they did in October), they might actually be able to beat Midtjylland at their own game!

The only one of these metrics that Midtjylland do not lead in, is the percentage of goal from set pieces. The only reason why is that they are beaten by Maccabi Tel Aviv - who scored 50% of their grand total of just 4 goals from set pieces.

In reality, Midtjylland’s 8 goals from set pieces is the most in the Europa League Proper this season, 2 more than the next best team (Celtic), and 3 more than Forest’s 5.

In summary, it’s clear Forest simply have to defend set piece situations better than they did in October, and better than they have done in general this season.

In this respect the mandated return of Sels to the squad is a little bit of a worry, as statistically he is one of the worst goalkeepers in set piece situations in the Premier League since Forest were promoted. Sels only attempts to intervene 16% of the time when a cross enters a catchable/punchable zone - and even then his success rate is a very low 69%.

For this reason, Forest’s defenders really need to take it upon themselves to defend these situations. It’s why I suggested on the Forest Focus podcast after the Brighton game that Forest may look to move to a back 5 for the extra height that would give them to defend these exact situations.

Whilst I think ideally we’d see Forest play in a 4-2-3-1 and try to impose Pereira’s more fluid playing style on an opponent they should get the better of, I fear Forest are still pretty fragile mentally especially when they suffer setbacks in front of a nervy home crowd. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pereira stick with a back 5 and allow Jair Cunha to continue his recent good form if he is deemed fit enough.