Nuno Espirito Santo takes blame for Wolverhampton Wanderers defeat; plays down Nottingham Forest performance

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Struggling Nottingham Forest caused a shock with a 2-0 victory at Molineux on Saturday.

Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Nuno Espirito Santo has told The Express & Star that he is to blame for making sure complacency wasn’t an issue in the 2-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

The Championship leaders lost in the league for the first time since October on Saturday as Kieran Dowell and Ben Osborn goals earned new Forest boss Aitor Karanka a shock victory at Molineux.

The Tricky Trees had only won one of their previous nine league matches, and Nuno has taken responsibility for allowing his players to ‘relax’ as if promotion to the Premier League was already secured.

However, the Portuguese still felt that Wolves, who remain nine points clear at the top of the table, were the better team and that Forest were fortunate to come away with three points having ‘not created anything’.

“I’m responsible, maybe for not telling the boys that there’s still a long way to go and nobody can relax here,” he is quoted by The Express & Star as saying. “So it’s me first – it was my responsibility first of all, because the way the team plays is the way I want them to play.

“We must improve and we have to bounce back from this immediately. We always do the same analysis, the standard is high and we have to improve and be better than we were.

“It was one of the games that we weren’t as good as we could and should be. The opponent didn’t create anything. I think we should have done better. There’s still a long way to go, Ipswich are the next opponent.

“Teams are trying to adapt themselves (to play Wolves), sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t. Congratulations to Nottingham but they achieved two goals when we were the better side.

“This is football, sometimes it happens to you and sometimes the other team.”

While Nuno’s honesty about Wolves’ mindset is refreshing, his assessment of the match is not quite accurate.

Forest had four shots on target compared to Wolves’ one, and were clinical with their chances as Dowell and Osborn scored within three minutes of each other at the end of the first half to earn their side a deserved win.