Anton Stach stood over the free-kick in the 88th minute and, for once, I didn’t immediately assume something stupid was about to happen.
This is progress.
The angle wasn’t perfect. Nottingham Forest had their wall arranged. Matz Sels was guarding his near post. The City Ground had already spent most of the afternoon watching two Premier League teams wrestle each other into something approaching a stalemate, with Forest having more of the ball and Leeds appearing increasingly comfortable with the idea that possession is occasionally just another way of giving your opponent something harmless to do.
Then Stach hit it.
Not beautifully, according to Daniel Farke.
Certainly effectively.
The ball bent around the wall, Sels was caught slightly flat-footed and suddenly 3,000 Leeds supporters were disappearing into each other in the away end.
Forest 0. Leeds 1.
An away win.
On the opening day.
I could get used to this.
Nottingham Forest 0-1 Leeds United: something has changed
The important thing about Leeds winning at Nottingham Forest wasn’t really the opening-day points, although three of those are obviously preferable to the traditional Premier League alternative of staring at the table after one weekend and calculating how many victories might be required to finish 17th.
It was expectation.
Last season, Leeds won twice away from home in 19 Premier League matches.
Two.
An away fixture consequently became something to survive. You hoped for a point, imagined three and quietly prepared yourself for the familiar sequence in which Leeds played reasonably well for an hour before somebody did something avoidable and everyone spent the journey home discussing what “encouraging signs” actually meant.
The expectation now should be different.
Not that Leeds will win every week. They won’t.
Not even that Leeds should expect to beat teams like Nottingham Forest away from home. The Premier League remains a grotesquely expensive machine designed to punish anyone feeling comfortable.
But Leeds should expect to compete.
Everywhere.
That sounds like an extremely modest ambition until you’ve spent a season watching away matches where simply remaining level after 70 minutes felt like a minor administrative triumph.
At the City Ground, Leeds looked like they belonged there.
That matters.
James Trafford had an expensive afternoon
There is something wonderfully predictable about football supporters seeing a £45 million goalkeeper take a couple of poor goal-kicks and immediately deciding they have uncovered fraud.
James Trafford’s first few touches in a Leeds shirt gave the Forest crowd precisely the material they wanted.
A wayward kick.
Another slightly uncertain moment.
Noise from the stands.
Excellent. The new bloke’s rubbish.
Then he spent the rest of the afternoon ruining the joke.
Trafford was composed under pressure, dealt confidently with crosses and made the game’s most important save when Igor Jesus found himself with a close-range opportunity.
It was exactly the sort of save Leeds bought him to make.
This is where transfer fees distort everything. A goalkeeper costing £45 million is no longer allowed merely to save footballs. He must apparently transform the metaphysical condition of the entire defence while simultaneously demonstrating immaculate distribution and presumably solving West Yorkshire’s transport infrastructure during international breaks.
Trafford just looked good.
That will do.
When Stach scored, he sprinted up the pitch to join the celebrations.
For somebody making his Premier League debut for Leeds, it was probably the quickest possible introduction to how this works. You spend 88 minutes being shouted at by strangers and then run 80 yards because another stranger has kicked a football particularly well.
Perfectly normal cultural behaviour.
Leeds United players suddenly look difficult
Farke wanted Leeds to become unpleasant to play against.
They were.
Not dirty. Not especially cynical. Just awkward.
Jaka Bijol, Joe Rodon and Tarik Muharemovic formed a defensive wall that occasionally resembled Mechagodzilla after somebody had replaced the missile launchers with shin pads. Large, metallic in spirit and apparently designed in a laboratory specifically to head footballs away from Chris Wood.
Forest tried.
Igor Jesus competed physically and found opportunities in the air without producing enough direction. Wood, facing his former club, dragged his clearest opportunity wide.
In front of the defence, Ethan Ampadu did Ethan Ampadu things, appearing wherever a loose ball was threatening to become interesting and making it significantly less interesting.
That isn’t criticism.
Every decent Premier League team needs someone capable of making football boring at precisely the correct moment.
Forest had somewhere between 55 and 58 per cent possession depending on which statistical provider you prefer, recorded 12 shots and produced around 0.65 expected goals.
Leeds finished around 0.49 xG.
Forest therefore technically created more.
They also lost 1-0.
Football analytics remains an extraordinarily useful way of explaining what happened immediately after something completely different has happened.
Anton Stach, burgers and free-kicks
Then there is Stach.
His preparation for the Premier League season included launching a charity burger in Leeds, because apparently this is what elite midfielders do now.
A difficult summer had preceded it. He missed out on Germany selection, suffered an injury and struggled through parts of pre-season.
Farke noticed an improvement during the final ten days.
Then came Nottingham.
Stach’s reputation from dead balls already preceded him. Four direct free-kicks last season placed him among Europe’s most productive specialists.
Forest knew.
Glasner said afterwards that they knew.
Sels certainly knew.
Knowing and stopping are unfortunately separate departments.
Farke’s description of Stach after the match was better than anything a marketing department could have produced.
“He even released a burger a few days ago and I never expected him to do this. He’s a bit of a weird and crazy guy.”
Fine by me.
Leeds have had enough normal footballers.
Farke also compared Stach’s technique, somewhat unfavourably, with Juninho before arriving at the considerably more important assessment: “bloody effective.”
Exactly.
There are no additional points awarded because a free-kick looks elegant in slow motion.
It crossed the line.
Harry Wilson nearly scored somebody else’s goal
Leeds weren’t particularly fluent going forward.
That should probably be acknowledged before we start ordering commemorative DVDs.
The attacking combinations were occasionally disjointed and Dominic Calvert-Lewin spent periods isolated against Forest’s back line. Harry Wilson thought he had scored on his debut, only to discover he had actually prevented Calvert-Lewin from scoring.
Which takes some doing.
The ball was heading towards an onside Calvert-Lewin for what appeared to be a tap-in before Wilson, standing offside, intervened and finished it himself.
No goal.
Football produces elaborate tactical systems, recruitment departments staffed by dozens of analysts and training grounds full of technology, yet sometimes the main requirement remains: don’t touch that.
Wilson touched that.
Never mind.
The more encouraging part was that Leeds didn’t allow the frustration to alter the game.
Last season, this was precisely the sort of away fixture that could slowly drift away from them. A disallowed goal, a home side enjoying more possession, the clock ticking towards 80 minutes.
Then somebody scores against Leeds.
We know the script.
Except they didn’t.
Nottingham Forest had the ball. Leeds had the game.
Oliver Glasner deserves some sympathy.
This was his first competitive match as Forest manager, making him their fifth permanent head coach in less than a year.
Five.
At some point the manager’s office presumably becomes a serviced workspace where nobody bothers putting photographs on the desk.
Glasner was admirably realistic afterwards.
He said he couldn’t simply arrive with his staff, put their hands on the players’ shoulders and suddenly have Forest playing “like Real Madrid in the 70s”.
Which is probably disappointing to whichever executive keeps changing managers.
They had plenty of the ball. They moved Leeds around. They generated territory and produced moments of pressure.
But there was remarkably little menace attached to it.
The City Ground gradually shifted from opening-day optimism into that familiar football emotion where thousands of people realise they’ve seen this match before.
Possession.
Cross.
Clearance.
Possession.
Cross.
Clearance.
Groan.
Repeat.
Then Leeds won a free-kick.
This is what the Leeds United schedule should feel like now
The next match is Nottingham Forest again, this time in the League Cup, because apparently 90 minutes wasn’t enough and the fixture computer would like everybody to immediately reconsider the same relationship.
But the more important change stretches beyond Forest.
Every Premier League fixture should now arrive with the expectation that Leeds can compete.
Manchester City away?
Compete.
Arsenal?
Compete.
Liverpool?
Compete.
That does not mean pretending Leeds have suddenly become title challengers because Anton Stach scored a free-kick in Nottingham.
Nobody needs that sort of behaviour.
It means the default position can no longer be survival within individual matches.
Leeds have invested in players such as Trafford and Muharemovic because the ambition is supposed to have moved forward. They have Premier League experience from last season. They have a manager who increasingly understands what this division demands from his squad.
The floor should rise.
And winning ugly away from home is part of that.
There was nothing particularly glamorous about Saturday. Forest had more possession. Leeds committed 14 fouls, Forest 15. Both teams frequently collapsed into back fives. Attacks disappeared into midfield collisions. The decisive goal was a late set-piece.
Good.
Manchester City can keep the 45-pass goals.
Sometimes you need Anton Stach and his burger.
Leeds United best player against Nottingham Forest?
For me, James Trafford just edges it. Especially when we’ve struggled with the keeper position for so long now. It’s ideal we’ve got someone who acts with confidence between the sticks.
Stach produced the decisive moment and deserves all the attention that follows it, but Trafford’s performance changed the shape of the afternoon.
After those early goal-kicks encouraged the City Ground to test his nerves, he simply refused to become rattled. His handling was assured, his positioning was strong and the save from Igor Jesus was enormous.
There is also something reassuring about watching a Leeds goalkeeper claim a cross without your central nervous system initiating emergency procedures.
Stach is an extremely close second.
His goal won the match, his set-pieces give Leeds a weapon capable of deciding precisely these sorts of fixtures, and his increasingly strange CV now includes professional footballer, German international and hamburger collaborator.
Quite the week.
Did Leeds United beat Forest today?
Yes.
Leeds United beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 at the City Ground on Saturday, 22 August 2026, with Anton Stach scoring the winning goal from a direct free-kick in the 88th minute.
James Trafford kept a clean sheet on his Leeds Premier League debut, while Daniel Farke’s side recorded something they managed only twice throughout the entirety of last season: an away league victory.
That’s the result.
The more interesting part is what happens to expectations afterwards.
How to watch Leeds United next
Conveniently, the Leeds United schedule now produces Nottingham Forest again.
Leeds’ next match is against Forest in the League Cup, with the game being televised in the UK on both ITV and Sky Sports.
Forest will presumably spend the intervening period working out how to create more from their possession.
Leeds will presumably spend it trying not to give Stach another food-related commercial opportunity.
Away wins should stop feeling unusual
At full-time, this didn’t feel like a smash-and-grab that required an apology.
Forest had more possession and marginally more xG, but Leeds defended properly, competed physically, stayed in the match and possessed a weapon their opponents couldn’t deal with when the decisive opportunity finally arrived.
That’s Premier League football.
Last season, an away victory felt like discovering £20 in an old coat. Lovely, unexpected and certainly not something you’d budget around.
This season needs to be different.
The expectation is simpler.
Turn up.
Compete.
Make the other team work for everything.
And when the match becomes ugly, stay ugly with it.
Leeds did that at Nottingham Forest.
Then, with two minutes remaining, the bloke who launched a burger during the week bent a free-kick into the net.
Football can spend months constructing narratives around recruitment, systems, managerial philosophy and expected goals.
Sometimes a German midfielder just kicks the ball properly.
doragon sports 
One response to “Nottingham Forest 0-1 Leeds United: Away Days Are Supposed to Feel Like This”
[…] towards his near post. Not quickly enough. The ball was in the net, Stach was running away and Leeds had won 1-0 in Nottingham for their first league victory at the City Ground since […]
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