{"id":340769,"date":"2026-03-21T13:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/340769\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T13:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T13:10:12","slug":"all-whites-captain-chris-wood-scores-in-first-match-in-five-months-as-he-targets-premier-league-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/340769\/","title":{"rendered":"All Whites captain Chris Wood scores in first match in five months as he targets Premier League return"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wood hasn\u2019t played since mid-October last year, when he had 16 minutes off the bench for Nottingham Forest against Chelsea.<\/p>\n

His knee issues led him to have surgery in December, and that led to speculation he could miss the rest of the season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But his return will be a huge boost for the All Whites, three months out from the start of the Fifa World Cup and for Forest as they fight to avoid relegation in the Premier League.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Forest manager Vitor Pereira said he was encouraged by Wood\u2019s recent progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to push him up, but I think he will be able to help us in the last few games of the season,\u201d Pereira said. \u201cHe is important for the group because he has quality. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe scores goals, and he has the personality to help us. I usually don\u2019t push the players to come earlier, but today he started the warm-up with the team. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really hope we can have him for the last games because he\u2019s an important player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood has also been sorely missed at Forest<\/a>, who are now just two points outside the relegation zone, following last weekend\u2019s home defeat to Liverpool. Forest have scored just 28 goals in 30 League games, the second-lowest in the competition only behind Wolves.<\/p>\n

The New Zealander was a huge part of their eye-catching campaign last season, hitting the magical 20-goal mark, as Forest spent much of the season in the top four and eventually finished seventh, to qualify for the Europa League. <\/p>\n

Forest are just above the relegation zone with eight games remaining this season, and they face fellow strugglers Tottenham on Monday.<\/p>\n

Their first game back is on April 13 against Aston Villa.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Wood has been left out of the New Zealand squad to play Finland (March 27) and Chile (March 31) in the upcoming Fifa series, which stars in Auckland next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wood hasn\u2019t played since mid-October last year, when he had 16 minutes off the bench for Nottingham Forest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5263,806,13381,3276,19345,1888,1342,692,78,15258,15439,14731,1362,10543,3234,111,139,69,1570,31959,14730,1527,14729,65831,7811,213,88,64174,8220,5264,4883],"class_list":["post-340769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all","tag-as","tag-captain","tag-chris","tag-field","tag-first","tag-five","tag-he","tag-in","tag-injury","tag-knee","tag-league","tag-made","tag-match","tag-months","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-october","tag-outing","tag-premier","tag-return","tag-scores","tag-scoring","tag-since","tag-sports","tag-surprise","tag-sustaining","tag-targets","tag-whites","tag-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}