Nottingham Forest FC 0-0 Tottenham Hotspur FC: Premier League Match Report, 5 September 2026

Two of last season's bottom-five survivors met and produced nothing. Nottingham Forest FC 0-0 Tottenham Hotspur FC, goalless at half-time and goalless at the end. With no goals there is nothing for the record to omit, which for once makes the absence of scorer data irrelevant.

Forest arrived twelfth on a point from two matches, having lost 1-0 at home to Leeds and drawn 2-2 at Liverpool from a half-time lead. Tottenham had played once at the time the prediction went out and twice by kick-off, losing 3-0 at Brentford and 2-0 at home to Newcastle. Neither club's opening fortnight had produced a win.

The relevant history is the 2025/26 table, where Forest finished sixteenth on 44 points and Spurs seventeenth on 41 — three points and one place apart, with goal differences of -3 and -9. Two clubs that close together, both of which lost sixteen or seventeen times last season, meeting in early September, is a fixture with a goalless draw written into it more plainly than most.

The scoreless result carries one clear consequence for the visitors. Tottenham have now played three matches, scored no goals and conceded five. Their first point and first clean sheet of the season arrived in the same afternoon, and their first goal did not.

Two points and two goals is Forest's entire return from three matches, and both of the goals came at Anfield. That is a slow start by any measure, though a slow start from a club that finished sixteenth is closer to expectation than to alarm.

Spurs' position is worse on the face of it and needs the same caution. Zero goals in three matches from a side that scored 48 last season is not a rate anyone should project forward; it is three matches, all three against clubs that finished above them last season. What it does mean is that the question about their attack is now a real one rather than a hypothetical.

The gap of three points that separated these two in May remains the best statement about their relative level, and this fixture did nothing to widen or close it. They took a point each from a match in which neither could score.

Our pre-match call was Nottingham Forest FC to Win at 2.20, at medium confidence. It lost.

The case was home advantage in a fixture between two clubs separated by three points last season, with Forest holding the better goal difference (-3 to -9) and Spurs arriving on the back of a 3-0 defeat and a 2-0 defeat without scoring in either. Backing the home side at 2.20 was a way of taking a price on the marginally better team in a match neither was favoured to dominate.

Two things were underweighted. First, Forest had scored twice in two matches themselves, which is not the profile of a side you back to win outright. Second, a fixture between two clubs that finished sixteenth and seventeenth is exactly the shape of match that ends 0-0, and an outright win selection has no protection against that. The draw was the obvious risk and it landed.

Verdict: lost