Nottingham Forest are threadbare, says Dyche after 0-0 draw

Nottingham Forest manager Sean Dyche praised a side he described as “shabby” for their performance in their 0-0 draw with Sturm Graz in the Europa League, despite conceding frustration due to missed chances.

Dyche made seven changes during the trip to Austria, with his options limited by injuries to the likes of Elliott Anderson, Douglas Luiz, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Chris Wood.

Forest still dominated the match against the Austrian champions, but saw several chances miss, most notably when Morgan Gibbs-White missed a penalty kick in the 34th minute.

Nicolas Dominguez hit the crossbar late on, but Dyche was left to settle in a stalemate before turning focus to a huge Premier League clash with Leeds United on Sunday.

That game was clearly on his mind in the final minutes, with James McAtee and Arnaud Kalimuendo substituted to prevent the injury crisis from worsening, with defenders Murillo and Zach Abbott entering the fray due to a lack of resources in attack.

Daiichi said of the substitutions: “I’m happy in terms of the effort and the physical aspect of the match; the way Maka put in a lot, Kale put in a lot. We have to be careful and we had to take them out in case we get more injuries.”

“I think it’s just a muscle spasm,” Daichi added, referring to an obvious problem for Kalimundo. “But when the body gets to that stage, you often get muscle injuries. Trying to raise the fitness level of the group is difficult because we have a lot of injuries.”

Regarding the overall performance, Dyche said: “I think it is a matter of frustration and being satisfied with a point. We are clearly in a shabby state.

“We had players playing that ideally, you wouldn’t put them in a game like this – you would try to give them games away from that kind of competition to prepare them. And even more so with Caley, he was thrown in at the deep end a little bit.

“We were limited with changes on the bench. We would have preferred to make more changes earlier in the game.

“On the other hand, the disappointing aspect of the performance is that we created a lot of good chances, and even more so in the first half. They are golden chances, they are chances that change the whole complexion of the game because we were in control and playing some good things.

“We were influencing the game, we looked like a threat from set-pieces, we looked like a threat from open play, we all feel the changes when you score goals. But we didn’t.

“That’s the frustrating part because I think overall we should come out of here with a win. I think that was clear from the performance, in my opinion.”