Football fairytales do still exist.
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At the start of the season, no one would have predicted Nottingham Forest to be guaranteed a place in the Premier League’s top three on New Year’s Day.
The once mighty Forest, who famously won back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980, were in fact one of the favourites to be relegated this season, according to the bookmakers.
After winning two of their last three matches to finish one place above the drop zone last campaign, that prediction made sense.
But now, they are one place off top spot and everyone else has egg on their face.
Forest moved to second with a 2-0 win at Everton in the early hours of Monday morning Australian time, and at worst they will start 2025 in third if Chelsea win at second-last Ipswich Town.
It was their fifth consecutive victory in the league, which is the longest winning streak in English football’s top flight since 1995.
Sitting on 37 points with 11 wins and four draws for 19 matches, they have already surpassed their entire points tally from last season by five.
Forest returned to the Premier League for the first time in 23 years in the 2022/23 season and in their two previous campaigns back among England’s heavyweights, they only won nine games in each season.
“We are enjoying it,” Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo said of their league position. “We are especially enjoying because our fans are enjoying.
“This is what we have to do together, let’s enjoy the journey, compete in every match. Nothing changes, we have to realise we didn’t achieve anything.”
It has been a stunning turnaround, and it has been built off the back of staunch defence.
The 26 goals they have scored so far is the equal least, alongside Aston Villa, among the top 12 teams, but they have still presented a serious attacking threat.
New Zealander Chris Wood has been the hero up front with 11 goals after earlier in the year knocking back the pursuits of the A-League’s newest team, Auckland FC.
The tall striker is a major threat in the air and is a proven finisher with a double figure goal tally in six different Premier League seasons across his stints at Forest and Burnley.
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The 33-year-old is on track to better his best season tally of 14, which he has reached twice, and sits equal fourth in the golden boot standings, six shy of Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.
Everton boss, and Wood’s former mentor at Burnley, Sean Dyche was full of praise for Wood after he scored at Goodison Park.
“He’s got a different format they’re working to there which seems to be to his liking. He’s got wide players, they’ve got a strength behind them, and they get the ball up to him quickly,” Dyche said.
“That seems to be a thing that’s good for him and not massively dissimilar to what we were trying to achieve at Burnley.
“But yeah, I think a lot of credit to him, credit to his professionalism to keep on top of himself. He had a quiet spell when he first went there and [there were] a few question marks over him.
“That can happen with strikers. He’s had that before, and he’s come through it. Certainly a very good player, and someone I’ve got a lot of respect for.”
But it is at the other end of the pitch where Forest are causing the most headaches for their opponents.
Goalkeeper Matz Sels boasts the most clean sheets in the league with eight, and has made many crucial stops throughout the first half of the season.
In front of Sels is real the star of the show, however.
Centre back Nikola Milenkovic was bought from Fiorentina for £12 million in the summer and is proving to be bargain in comparison to what the richer clubs fork out for the linchpins of their defences.
In fact, the 27-year-old is widely regarded as the best signing of the season.
“The Serbian defender has helped turn Nottingham Forest into one of the best defensive sides in the Premier League under Nuno Espirito Santo’s guidance, with an old-school appetite for the battle with his centre-forward,” The UK Telegraph’s sports writer Lawrence Ostlere wrote.
“He’s also added a set-piece threat at the other end of the pitch, with a couple of goals and an assist already this season, and must have added plenty of value to his £12m transfer fee.”
Milenkovic’s impact has been so great, that it has even forgiven other missteps Forest have made in transfer windows past.
“Nottingham Forest were mocked, sometimes rightly, for signing vast numbers of players in recent years; so many that they didn’t have room in the squad for some of them,” The UK Telegraph’s senior football correspondent Richard Jolly wrote.
“Yet recruitment has clearly been refined: less quantity, more quality. Their side now has a series of fine buys. Nikola Milenkovic may be the best: not merely in what he is – a giant, dominant central defender – but in terms of what Forest lacks.
“He complements the excellent Murillo wonderfully. Forest now have one of the best central-defensive partnerships and defences in the division. And at £12m, Milenkovic is a bargain.”
In midfield, captain Morgan Gibbs-White has been inspirational.
He followed manager Nuno from Wolves to the City Ground, and has since become an England international.
Gibbs-White scored in their most recent outing at Everton, but it his creativity in the middle of the pitch that has drawn the most praise.
At Goodison Park, he also set up Wood’s goal and has been dubbed by his manager a “talented player” who is “fantastic”.
He along with Wood and Milenkovic will need to maintain their high standards if Forest are to challenge for the title or hang on to a Champions League place.
Chants of ‘we’re going to win the league’ have rung out from the Forest fans regularly in recent months, but with every win they are becoming less tongue-in-cheek.
It would take a mighty collapse from league leaders Liverpool, who are eight points clear with a game in hand, but the fact Forest and the Reds are battling it out at the pointy end of the table is a providing older fans with a lot of nostalgia.
Forest won the English First Division in 1978 with Liverpool finishing second, the following year their places were reversed.
During the 1980s, Forest finished third on three occasions and they last played in the European Cup, now the Champions League, in the 1980-81 season.
Now, the dream is real of hearing the Champions League theme on a Tuesday or Wednesday night at the City Ground.
It will be a challenge, but their biggest tests might be behind them.
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In the second half of the season, their clashes with fellow top five teams Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City are all at home.
That Liverpool match is only two weeks away, first they will travel to an in form Wolves in a grudge match for Nuno, and after that clash we will have a better understanding how serious about being a top team Forest truly are.
Their current standing proves this is more than merely a good start, but it remains unclear whether this could be another Leicester City fairytale title, an Aston Villa of last season charge to the Champions League, or a campaign that fades into the middle of the table.
