Neither side will have been jumping for joy at the prospect of a rematch so soon after Saturday’s Premier League opener.<\/p>\n
But Forest enjoyed some early promise as James Trafford was forced into a great save in the 10th minute when he had to fend away Ola Aina’s cross-shot, which almost left him wrongfooted.<\/p>\n
Then Justin was in the right place at the right time to stop Igor Jesus’ header from going in.<\/p>\n
Leeds came into it and should have gone in front midway through the first half when James got in down the right, but his pull-back was just behind Sean Longstaff, who shot straight at Matz Sels.<\/p>\n
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/skysports-leeds-forest_7331339.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Image:
\n James Justin scores Leeds’ second goal at Forest<\/p>\n
Both sides were going for it and Leeds defender Joe Rodon denied Chris Wood with a brilliant last-ditch tackle while Sels kept out James’ low effort at the other end.<\/p>\n
The Wales international showed the required composure five minutes after the restart.<\/p>\n
Aina’s wayward header allowed Longstaff to gallop forward and he played in James, who clipped home.<\/p>\n
Forest almost hit straight back as Arnaud Kalimuendo’s cutback was perfect for Wood, but Trafford did brilliantly to stop his effort from going into the bottom corner, before Noah Okafor sent an effort just wide as Leeds staged a rapid counter-attack.<\/p>\n
Leeds sealed the victory with 15 minutes remaining but there was nothing pretty about it.<\/p>\n
Lucas Nmecha tried to claim it as his bundled effort was blocked on the line by Williams, with Justin finally putting the ball into the back of the net.<\/p>\n
The managers…<\/p>\n
Nottingham Forest boss Oliver Glasner told Sky Sports<\/p>\n
“This is a little bit the assessment after six weeks here, that maybe – and not just in the team, it’s maybe in the club – that there’s a little bit of ignoring the reality.<\/p>\n
“Right now, we are far away from where we want to be, and what I’m really convinced in that where we will be.<\/p>\n
“The fact is that this team had a relegation battle for nine months. Very turbulent season and it ended with a huge effort to stay in the league, and this is our starting point.<\/p>\n
“It’s really very important not to blame anybody because sometimes I tell them facts and they say, ‘Oh, Glasner is complaining’.<\/p>\n
“No, no, no. But then maybe your best midfielder [Elliot Anderson] leaves the club and now we expect we compete for European places because Oliver Glasner is in. Sorry, this is what I can’t deliver within six weeks.<\/p>\n
“I’m no magician, no messiah, just hard work. That is what we have to do.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t make sense talking about seventh two years ago. It’s hard, it’s tough, but if you ignore the reality then you live in dreamland and this is never the best thing to do.”<\/p>\n
Leeds boss Daniel Farke told Sky Sports:<\/p>\n
“This is what we came for, and this was my main goal.<\/p>\n
“You play a cup run to go through. Very happy with the level of the performance, because we had to wait very long for a win here at Nottingham and to do this two times within three days at such a tough ground, this remarkable level of performance was outstanding.<\/p>\n
“Saturday was really a tight game, but today I think it’s not in doubt that it was a fully deserved win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leeds United registered a second win at Nottingham Forest in three days as they booked their spot in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-604805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}