There are fixtures that arrive with a neat little storyline tucked under their arm. Nottingham Forest vs Everton turns up with two, maybe three, and all of them matter.
This meeting at the City Ground comes with the obvious needle: Sean Dyche, once tasked with keeping Everton’s head above water, now trying to steer Forest back towards calmer seas. It also comes with urgency. Everton are winless in three and have not scored in three, while Forest are hunting the kind of result that can stop a season wobbling and start it marching.
Dyche at Forest: the old label doesn’t fit anymore.
If you arrived expecting Dyche-ball in its most familiar form, Forest have been busy challenging that idea.
Yes, the cornerstones are still there: organisation, discipline, hard running, set-piece focus, and a team that looks far more difficult to play through than before. But what’s made Forest interesting is the way they have shown more ambition with the ball, playing on the front foot, trying to control phases of games, and moving it with more purpose than many expected.
There have been glimpses of a Forest side willing to play on the ground and progress through the thirds rather than defaulting to territory alone. Even against elite opponents, they’ve shown moments of composure and threat, the kind that hint Dyche is not simply repeating old habits, but adapting to the squad and the challenge.
And that matters against Everton, because Forest will need both bravery and ruthlessness: brave enough to play, ruthless enough to punish.
The Everton chapter: a job done, a rethink required.
Dyche’s Everton spell will always be judged through the lens of context: pressure, scrutiny, and a club that, for a sustained period, lived too close to the relegation trapdoor.
Not every Everton fan took to the aesthetics, but the remit was survival, and he delivered it. He kept the club up twice. From Dyche’s side, it’s easy to see the logic: he did exactly what he was hired to do.
Yet football moves quickly. Sometimes a fresh voice is not a criticism of what came before, but a reset button for what comes next.
Moyes’s Everton: competitive everywhere, dangerous away.
Enter David Moyes, and Everton have looked like a side with sharper identity and stronger belief. One of the biggest shifts since his return has been Everton’s away form, not because they “suffer”, but because they compete.
This Everton team has gone into away matches and been in them, properly. They’ve made games uncomfortable for opponents, stayed organised, and shown a willingness to go toe-to-toe rather than simply hang on. That competitive edge has translated into one of the league’s best away records over the same period, behind only Arsenal.
That’s why this isn’t just “Forest at home”. It’s Forest at home against an Everton side that travels with confidence, structure, and a growing sense that they belong in these fights.
The reverse fixture: Everton’s 3-0 that still stings.
Forest do not need reminding, but Everton will happily provide it anyway: the reverse fixture finished Everton 3-0 Nottingham Forest at the Hill Dickinson Stadium.
That day, Everton struck early, controlled key periods, and left Forest chasing the game. For Dyche, it was a frustrating return to his former club. For Forest, it was a reminder that reputation doesn’t win duels.
Now, the emotional wiring is reversed: Dyche faces Everton again, but with a chance to make it his kind of night.
Why both teams need this.
This match sits at an interesting junction of ambition and anxiety.
Everton’s season has carried real intent given where they have been over the past four to five years, enough that the conversation has shifted from survival to progress. But a fourth match without a win and without a goal would start to feel less like a blip and more like a drag on momentum.
Forest, meanwhile, are trying to steady themselves and stay clear of danger, while also remembering who they were not long ago. This is a Forest team that qualified for Europe comfortably and, at one stage, sat in the Champions League mix. They know what good looks like. The job now is to make it consistent again, and Dyche is slowly nudging them back towards that.
Moyes’s challenge is not only tactical, it’s personnel.
Everton are depleted and missing a huge chunk of their core. They are already without Jarrad Branthwaite, Abdoulaye Doucouré, Iliman Ndiaye, and Idrissa Gana Gueye, leaving them short across key areas of the pitch.
That is why the hope of Jack Grealish returning matters so much. Everton’s recent run has lacked that extra dash of invention and edge in the final third. If he’s available, it changes how Everton can build attacks, how they can keep the ball higher up the pitch, and how they can turn control into chances.
There was, though, a silver lining at Burnley: Tyler Dibling showed flashes of why Everton were willing to invest so heavily in him. His willingness to take responsibility, carry the ball, and commit defenders offered a glimpse of what he could become, and why he might be a key part of Everton’s next phase.
What to watch: reinvention vs momentum, and who blinks first..
This is where it gets spicy.
Dyche’s Forest are beginning to look like a team that can impose themselves at home, not merely endure. Moyes’s Everton have become a team that competes in every match, home or away, even when the squad is stretched thin.
Forest will look at Everton’s injury list and see opportunity. Everton will look at Forest’s improving confidence and see a challenge that demands focus and control.
And hovering over all of it is that familiar managerial sub-plot: Dyche, keen to show his Everton stint was a triumph of survival rather than a limitation of ideas; Moyes, keen to prove Everton’s ceiling is far higher than “staying up” and that this is a club moving with real direction again.
A big game, then, not because of a trophy on the line, but because of what it says about the next chapter for both.
Everton cannot afford a fourth blank. Forest cannot afford to let the floor wobble beneath them.
And Dyche, facing his old club, will believe this is exactly the kind of night that can turn a season’s mood on its head.
