Mixed emotions for Dyche after ‘threadbare’ Nottingham Forest held by Sturm Graz

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

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

Forest still dominated the game against the Austrian Bundesliga champions, but saw several opportunities go begging, the most glaring coming when Morgan Gibbs-White saw a penalty saved in the 34th minute.

Nicolas Dominguez hit the bar late on, but Dyche was left to settle for 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 closing stages, with James McAtee and Arnaud Kalimuendo brought off to prevent the injury crisis from getting worse, with defenders Murillo and Zach Abbott entering the fray due to a shortage of resources in attack. 

Dyche said of those substitutions: “I’m pleased in the sense of the effort and the physical side of the game; the way Macca has put his lot in, Kali has put his lot in. We’re having to be careful and we had to get them off in case of further injury.”

“I think it’s just cramp,” Dyche added of an apparent issue for Kalimuendo. “But when the body’s getting to that stage, you can often get muscle injuries. Trying to upscale the fitness of the group is difficult because we’ve got so many injuries.”

On the overall performance, Dyche said: “I think it’s both frustration and being pleased with a point. We’re obviously threadbare.

“We’ve had players playing who ideally you wouldn’t just throw into a game like this – you’d try to give them games away from this sort of competition to get them ready. More so with Kali; he’s been thrown in at the deep end a little bit.

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

“On the other hand, the frustration side of the performance is that we created so many good chances, more so in the first half. They’re golden chances, they’re chances that change the whole feel of the game because we were dominant and we’re playing some decent stuff.

“We were affecting the game, looked a threat from set-pieces, looked a threat from open play and the whole feel changes when you score goals. And we didn’t.

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