Coventry had not won a Premier League match since April 2001, and VAR took Forest’s equaliser away in the 86th minute
Jay Dasilva’s goal at the City Ground was Coventry City’s hundredth Premier League win. Their ninety-ninth came under Gordon Strachan, at Highfield Road, in 2001.
Sep 20, 2026
Carl Rushworth hit it long from his own area, Jay Dasilva took it down on the run and put it past Matz Sels, and Coventry City had a Premier League goal for the first time since coming back up. It was their hundredth win in the competition. The ninety-ninth was in April 2001.
What Coventry did in between
On 16 April 2001, John Hartson headed the only goal against Sunderland at Highfield Road, in front of 20,946 people, for a Coventry side managed by Gordon Strachan. Nineteen days later a 3-2 defeat at Aston Villa on 5 May sent them down and ended 34 consecutive seasons in the top division. It was the club’s first relegation since 1958.
Then came the part supporters would rather not relive. Eleven seasons in the second tier, a drop to League One in 2012, administration and a points deduction, the move out of Highfield Road in 2005, the rent dispute over the Ricoh Arena that pushed their home fixtures to Northampton, and in 2017 a fall into the fourth tier for the first time in 59 years. They climbed all the way back and won the Championship last season under Frank Lampard with 95 points and 97 goals.
Which made the start to this one look strange. Four matches, four defeats, no goals at all, including a 5-0 afternoon at home against Brighton. A team that had scored 97 times in a season had gone four matches and more than six hours of football without scoring once, and it arrived at Nottingham bottom of the table.
Twenty shots in the first half and no goal in it
Forest were the better side for long stretches and it counted for nothing. The first half produced 20 attempts on goal between the two teams and no score, the most in a goalless Premier League first half since Brentford and Liverpool managed 24 in January 2025. Rushworth kept the visitors level, Bobby Thomas cleared off his own line to deny Igor Jesus in the 76th minute, and the longer it went the more it looked like one of those evenings.
It nearly turned in the 86th. Jesus, on as a substitute, put the ball in from close range and the City Ground celebrated, but Jarred Gillett was sent to the pitchside monitor and came back with a different answer: a foul on Caleb Yirenkyi in the build-up, goal disallowed. It was the second home goal Forest have lost to VAR this season, after Neco Williams had one chalked off in a 0-0 draw with Tottenham.
Whether it was a foul will be argued about in Nottingham for a while. Lampard’s reading was that Jesus had “that little step on him which puts him off balance”, which is a fair description of the contact and also precisely what the manager of the team benefiting from it would say.
Three points, and not much more than that
Lampard was careful afterwards. “It’s been a tough opening for us, so those first Premier League points feel great,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live, before adding that “we’ll keep our feet on the ground because it is one win, but it was needed for us.” He is right to be careful. The three points lift Coventry off the bottom and no further; they are still inside the relegation zone on goal difference, and the goal difference in question is mostly what Brighton did to them.
Forest sit 12th, which after Saturday will feel worse than it reads. Oliver Glasner has a side generating chances at a rate that ought to be producing points and a conversion rate that is not.
The value for Coventry is less in the table than in the question that has been answered. A promoted team four games without a goal starts hearing about records nobody wants to hold. Dasilva stopped that conversation before it got going, and the pass that set it up came from the goalkeeper, which is a reasonable preview of the kind of season Coventry are in for.