Anton Stach stood over a free-kick at the City Ground on Saturday afternoon and, for a few seconds, Nottingham Forest probably thought they had survived.
They had survived most other things.
Leeds had allowed Forest plenty of the ball, spent long periods defending their penalty area and generally approached the opening weekend of the Premier League with the grim practicality of people moving a wardrobe down a narrow staircase. It was not especially elegant, but nobody dropped it.
Then Stach hit the ball.
Matz Sels moved 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 1972.
Three days later, we are doing the whole thing again.
Forest vs Leeds II.
Same stadium. Same opposition. Same away end. Presumably some of the same people working behind the kiosks wondering why 3,000 Yorkshiremen have returned so quickly.
Only the competition has changed.
Leeds United’s next match is against Nottingham Forest in the Carabao Cup second round on Tuesday, 25 August 2026, kicking off at 8pm at the City Ground.
It is effectively football’s version of accidentally saying goodbye to somebody and then discovering you are both walking in the same direction.
Nottingham Forest vs Leeds United, again
The important bit first.
What was the score of the last Leeds United game against Nottingham Forest?
Leeds won 1-0 at the City Ground in the Premier League on Saturday, with Stach scoring the winner from a free-kick in the 88th minute.
There has barely been enough time to develop nostalgia for it.
Usually a rematch allows events to acquire mythology. Players change. Managers change. Supporters spend several months selectively remembering whichever incidents best support the argument they already wanted to make.
Here we have had 72 hours.
Forest have presumably still got Saturday’s tactical notes lying around somewhere.
That makes Tuesday interesting because neither manager can pretend not to know what the other is planning.
Oliver Glasner’s Forest had more possession at the weekend and created opportunities without ever looking particularly comfortable. Chris Wood should have scored. Harry Wilson had a goal ruled out. James Trafford kept a clean sheet on his Leeds debut. Eventually Stach settled everything.
Forest’s reward for spending much of Saturday trying to work Leeds out is another 90 minutes of Leeds.
Anton Stach is becoming wonderfully strange
I need to talk about Anton Stach.
Actually, I want to.
There are footballers whose appeal is immediately obvious. The tiny winger who beats three defenders. The elegant midfielder who appears to have been taught football in a conservatoire. The striker who scores 25 goals and removes the need for anyone to explain why he is good.
Stach is different.
He is 6ft 4in, German, technically a midfielder and occasionally appears to have been assembled from spare parts belonging to three separate footballers.
His primary position is central or defensive midfield, although his size, defensive ability and versatility mean he can operate deeper when required. Leeds themselves described him on arrival as a commanding presence capable of playing in midfield and defence.
His style of play is difficult to package neatly, which is part of the appeal. He can break up play, compete physically, carry the ball forward and pass progressively, while his height makes him useful in both penalty areas. Stach himself has spoken about developing his ball-carrying, passing and strength in duels since moving to England.
Then there are the free-kicks.
Beautiful free-kicks traditionally bend delicately into the top corner while a goalkeeper performs the ceremonial dive required for the photograph.
Stach’s occasionally look as though somebody has fired a paving slab out of industrial machinery.
Daniel Farke understands this.
He described Stach as a “weird and crazy guy” and compared his free-kicks unfavourably in aesthetic terms with Juninho before reaching the rather more important conclusion: they are bloody effective.
Correct.
There is something very Leeds about having a giant German midfielder whose set-piece technique looks slightly improper but keeps producing goals.
Saturday’s winner was another.
Anton Stach stats: the numbers are getting silly
Stach’s Anton Stach stats from last season deserve more attention too.
In the 2025/26 Premier League he made 29 appearances, scored five goals and supplied three assists.
By March, Leeds reported that he had scored four times in 29 appearances across competitions, with three of those goals coming directly from free-kicks.
Now the 2026/27 Premier League season is one match old and Stach already has another goal.
One appearance. One start. Ninety minutes. One goal. One free-kick goal.
Sustainable? Probably not.
Very funny? Absolutely.
And what country is Anton Stach from? Germany. He was born in Buchholz in der Nordheide and has represented the German national team.
There is something satisfying about Leeds importing a 6ft 4in German midfielder and discovering that one of his defining characteristics is apparently treating free-kicks from 20 yards as a personal affront.
Long may it continue.
Leeds might finally have an away-day personality
What impressed me more on Saturday was what happened before Stach scored.
Leeds did not dominate Forest.
They did something potentially more useful.
They annoyed them.
Forest had more of the ball but Leeds were comfortable allowing them to have it in relatively harmless areas. The tackles arrived. Passing lanes disappeared. Interceptions accumulated. Forest’s possession increasingly became the footballing equivalent of somebody wandering around IKEA insisting they knew where the exit was.
Last season, away matches could feel like endurance tests.
Tuesday gives us another opportunity to discover whether something has genuinely changed.
Farke appears increasingly comfortable with pragmatism. There was a time when that word was generally football shorthand for playing badly and explaining afterwards that it was deliberate.
This feels slightly different.
Leeds now have defenders capable of defending their penalty area, midfielders willing to compete physically and a goalkeeper purchased specifically to improve a position that had become unnecessarily adventurous.
It was not subtle. It did work.
Cup football exists partly for things like this.
Rotate without rotating too much. Rest people without looking as though you don’t care. Give new players minutes. Win anyway.
Who are Leeds United’s new signings for the 2026/27 season?
The summer recruitment has changed the feel of this squad.
Leeds’ four permanent additions so far are Harry Wilson, Tarik Muharemović, James Trafford and Nico Elvedi.
Wilson arrived first on a free transfer after leaving Fulham, signing a four-year deal.
Muharemović followed from Sassuolo, giving Leeds a 6ft 4in Bosnia and Herzegovina international centre-back who had just completed a strong Serie A season.
Then came Trafford.
And quite a lot of money.
How much did Leeds United pay to sign James Trafford from Manchester City?
The guaranteed initial fee was £40 million, plus potential add-ons, making Trafford Leeds United’s club-record signing.
Some reports place the possible total package at around £45m, but £40m is the initial guaranteed figure.
Spending £40m on a goalkeeper creates expectations rather rapidly, but starting with a clean sheet away from home is probably the least complicated way of dealing with them.
Finally came Elvedi, another experienced centre-back and somebody Farke already knows from their time together at Borussia Mönchengladbach.
It all feels quite deliberate.
There is height. Experience. Physicality. Premier League knowledge. Bundesliga knowledge. International experience.
Forest have their own reasons to care
This is not merely Leeds returning to Nottingham for an encore.
Forest need something from Tuesday too.
Glasner has barely unpacked and is already dealing with the peculiar impatience attached to Premier League management. He is Forest’s fifth permanent manager in less than a year, which makes learning everybody’s name seem almost unnecessarily ambitious.
Saturday was his first home game.
Tuesday is another.
Morgan Gibbs-White will miss it after suffering an injury in the weekend fixture, removing Forest’s most obvious creative presence.
Ousmane Diomande could make his first start after the £34m signing remained on the bench on Saturday. Chris Wood could also return to the starting XI against his former club.
There will be rotation on both sides.
But nobody will particularly want to lose.
Managers occasionally talk about cup competitions as opportunities until they get knocked out, at which point they become inconvenient distractions from the league.
Farke, at least, seems genuinely fond of the format.
He has talked about enjoying the “do or die” mentality of knockout football, and Tuesday should give us a better indication of how seriously that translates into team selection.
I would expect changes.
Dan James needs football. Sean Longstaff could feature. Noah Okafor could be given greater responsibility. Elvedi seems an obvious candidate for his debut.
But there is enough depth now that rotation does not necessarily mean surrender.
How can I watch Nottingham Forest vs Leeds United in the Carabao Cup?
For anyone not making the journey back down the M1 approximately three days after doing it the first time, Nottingham Forest vs Leeds United will be shown live on ITV1 and Sky Sports, with ITV’s coverage beginning at 7.30pm before the 8pm kick-off.
Yes, Leeds are on regular television.
Somewhere, an Emmerdale viewer is going to turn on ITV at 8pm expecting rural interpersonal turmoil and instead discover Ethan Ampadu arguing about a throw-in.
These things happen.
Forest vs Leeds II might tell us more than the first one
I am intrigued by Tuesday precisely because we have already seen this match.
Saturday established the first argument.
Forest can have possession.
Leeds can defend.
Stach can hurt them from dead balls.
Trafford can deal with what reaches him.
Now Glasner gets another attempt at solving it.
Football’s obsession with narratives means whatever happens will immediately be presented as evidence of something larger. If Forest win, Glasner has responded. If Leeds win, Farke has established a winning mentality. If Stach scores another free-kick, I will probably start demanding a statue.
None of those things would necessarily be true.
It is August.
But there is something unusually revealing about playing the same opponent twice in four days. There is nowhere for either manager’s first plan to hide because everybody has just watched it happen.
Forest know what frustrated them.
Leeds know what worked.
And I know what I want to see.
More of the enormous German bloke standing over a free-kick while everybody inside the City Ground experiences the unpleasant sensation of recognising what is about to happen.
It felt inevitable on Saturday, which usually means it wasn’t.
On Tuesday, perhaps we can do it again.
doragon sports 