Forest started the first half brightly with Matty Fryatt forcing David Marshall into a good save to turn the ball around the post. Forest looked very dominate in the first 20 minutes, Chris Burke causing havoc for Cardiff left back Ralls. Burke went past the left back several times but his final ball failed to deliver. One clear cut chance was when Burke neatly dribbled past Ralls and had a shot turned off the line by Craig Noone. This turned out to be a huge turning point in the game. Cardiff managed to clear their lines and immediately went on the counter attack. Federico Macheda picked the ball up and ran at the Forest defence. Eric Lichaj backed off, allowing Macheda to go past around three Forest players and put the ball past Karl Darlow. It was shocking defending from Lichaj who should have closed Macheda down a lot better. Forest lost their flow in the game and within five minutes Cardiff were 2-0 up. Peter Whittingham picked the ball up on the edge of the box and drilled a shot into the net at Karl Darlow's near post. Darlow could possibly have done better with this, as no goalkeeper should be beaten at their near post. However, the Forest defence should have known pre-match about Whittingham's threat when on his left foot and closed him down a lot quicker. Lichaj was maybe again arguably at fault as the goal came from his side. Forest struggled to keep the ball for the rest of the first half, with Cardiff controlling the game.
Stuart Pearce made a change at half-time with Dan Harding replacing Eric Lichaj who had a horrid time in the first half. The change didn't seem to have any impact with Cardiff still having full control of the game. Forest's passing was poor, and Forest appear to be missing Andy Reid massively as he can control the play and rarely misses a pass. Forest did appear to have halved the deficit when he converted a rebound from a Michail Antonio shot, but he was ruled off for offside. Looking back on the Sky Sports replay, he did appear to be marginally offside. Karl Darlow also prevented Forest from going 3-0 down at the other end, where Whittingham's set pieces were causing all sorts of problems. Whittingham whipped in a beautiful free kick and found Sean Morrison who had his header saved from point blank range. Forest did slightly improve when David Vaughan came on for Henri Lansbury in the 57th minute. Forest suddenly came alive in the final ten minutes and deservedly got a goal back in the 89th minute, with Assombalonga smashing the ball into the net after fantastic work from Michail Antonio down the right hand side. Antonio had a relatively quiet game before the final period of the game, rarely troubling the Cardiff defence. Forest piled the pressure on Cardiff at the end but failed to equalize and lost their unbeaten record in the process.
Overall, it was a very disappointing performance and result for Forest. We seem to have lost the fluid passing and football which we had at the beginning of the season. The defence also seems to be more liable to mistakes recently having now conceded four goals in the last two games. Andy Reid is being massively missed in midfield, due to his ability to pick out that key pass. One positive was that Assombalonga has now managed to add to his tally which has taken him to 9 goals, just as many as any Forest player managed last season. Forest and Pearce will know that they will have to massively improve their performance if they are going to get anything up at Vicarage Road on Tuesday when they play Watford.
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