Rochdale 1-0 Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest's poor run of form was extended as they fell to a 1-0 defeat to Rochdale at Spotland. Stuart Pearce's strong looking side was defeated by a Peter Vincenti penalty early in the first half.

Forest started the first half brightly, with Michail Antonio winning the first corner of the game. The first big moment in the game is when Chris Burke went on a fantastic run down the right hand side of the pitch all the way into the penalty area when he was brought down. The referee failed to award a penalty however and only rewarded a free-kick on the edge of the box. David Vaughan stepped up to take the free-kick and forced the keeper into a good save. Rochdale themselves had a penalty decision go their way as Michail Antonio clumsily brought down the player in the area to give the referee no choice but to award the penalty. Peter Vincenti stepped up to take the penalty for Rochdale and converted into the bottom right hand corner to beat De Vries who dived the other way. Forest could easily have found themselves 2-0 down just moments after as Vincenti found himself with another glorious opportunity but could only volley wide. Britt Assombalonga had a claim for a penalty as he was pulled back in the area. Rochdale then had another fantastic opportunity as Done ran through on goal rounded De Vries and passed to Allen who failed to convert into an empty net before Danny Fox came in with a saving challenge. Forest were lucky to find themselves only one goal down at half-time.

Forest started the second half in search of an equalizer, Lichaj's cross which almost reached Assombalonga gave the Forest fans some hope of a comeback. Lars Veldwijk then had a fantastic chance from a Burke cross but could only head the ball wide of the mark. Britt Assombalonga then ran through on goal one on one with the keeper but the keeper came out on top with a good low save. Forest won a huge amount of corners, sixteen in total during the game but nothing was coming of any of them. Lars Veldwijk had a great chance to score a late equalizer but his header was comfortably tipped over the bar by the keeper. Eric Lichaj then had a shot deflected over as Forest's frustrations increased. In the end they couldn't break Rochdale down to find the equalizer.

Overall, it is always a poor result when a team loses to a team who are in a lower division. This was an especially poor result considering the strong team that Pearce named and the relatively weakened one Rochdale named. You'd expect Forest to be able to beat this sort of League One team quite comfortably with the quality they have within their squad. Even though this was not the case I do think Forest are very unlucky at the moment with everything going against them e.g. the Chris Burke penalty decision. If decisions like this started to go their way again they could start to turn their results around.