Nicolas Dominguez v West Ham
A stand out performance from the Argentinian, especially on the ball. Let's look at his composure.
The fan base has often been split on who should partner Elliot Anderson whilst Ibrahim Sangare is on international duty - even personally I’ve been a little on the fence about it, but last night’s performance cements Dominguez’s spot in the Premier League.
Even before his equalising goal, Dominguez was key in Forest’s midfield, outshining his partner in trying to keep the ball moving. What really showed up last night was his consistent scanning before he receives the ball. In this first video, he doesn’t follow the ball, instead he smartly waits to see where it will fall - before it comes to him, he looks to his left and plays the first time pass to start the attack. On this occasion, Hudson-Odoi makes a decision to try a left-footed shot later in this phase of play.
This second example is a little more subtle. Aina knocks a loose ball down to Hutchinson, who supported well in defence here. Dominguez takes a quick look down Forest’s right, knowing already that Aina is running free. He plays a perfect pass into his path.
In this last clip from the first half, we see Dominguez’s intelligence very clearly. Long-time followers of my account will know the importance I place on scanning, particularly for midfielders. In this short space of time Dominguez scans at least 5 times before receiving passes.
This means he’s always absolutely sure of what’s around him, and where pressure might be coming from. I’d argue one of the reasons he’s so good at this is because he takes advantage of those midfielders who fail to do it themselves.
Moving into the second half now, we see him scan again but this time really take his time under pressure. He does well to retain possession, doesn’t panic and eventually picks the right forward pass. To cap it off, he doesn’t admire his work and immediately looks to give Gibbs-White an option of a one-two.
His game wasn’t without errors, it’s really tough for midfielders at this level to be “perfect”. What matters though is how players react to those errors. Here he makes a poor decision to try a flick to an empty wing (notice this also comes when he doesn’t scan first!). But he immediately falls back into defensive mode, reads the play and makes a good intervention, sliding to play the ball into Bakwa’s feet.
Something Forest have really struggled with in recent games is getting players close to Igor Jesus, but no worries, we can really on Dominguez to take up those positions as long as the pass isn’t over the defenders for Jesus to chase. Forest actually did this kind of thing pretty well at times in the second half, with Jesus making numerous good flicks to Forest players in close proximity to him.
Dominguez carries the ball well, often looking to his right whilst trying to invite Walker-Peters in closer to him. He succeeds in this, but unfortunately slightly overhits his pass to Hudson-Odoi. Obviously we don’t want to see players fail, but I much prefer moments like this when it comes down to poor execution rather than poor decision making. Even then, Hudson-Odoi is able to create a chance for Dominguez, who allows others to run past him knowing it should give him more space on the edge of the box.
In the final clip, let’s look at his equalising goal. West Ham set up similarly to Forest (no surprise with Nuno in charge) in a hybrid zonal and man-marking system. There’s a high chance Dominguez would never get picked up here, but his late arrival into the box ensures it.
He makes a quick run to the near post, and for me flicks it on in the hope of Forest winning second contact, rather than intentionally trying to score. Either way, the ball loops into the far corner and Dominguez scored a key goal in Forest’s season.
Last night was easily Dominguez’s strongest performance of the season, perhaps no surprise considering he missed all of pre-season and has struggled for consistent game time. On Twitter, I described his action map as ‘Anderson-like’ - he was all over the pitch in and out of possession, and for me was Forest’s clear man of the match.
His challenge now is to build on this performance and give Dyche something to think about when Sangare returns later this month. He hasn’t made more than 5 Premier League starts in a row since his debut season in 2023/24 - he’ll surely start against Arsenal next weekend which would give him 5 in a row on this run. Sangare’s return is still unknown, with a latest domestic return date being the Brentford away game on 25th January.