Swansea City vs Nottingham Forest. Sky Bet Championship.
Swansea.com StadiumAttendance19,522.
Nottingham Forest have better chances but spoils are shared
Sunday 16 September 2018 19:42, UK
Swansea and Nottingham Forest both seemed happy to take a point as they played out a drab 0-0 draw at the Liberty Stadium.
Aitor Karanka's visitors squandered the best of their limited opportunities, while the Swans failed to really threaten in the Sky Bet Championship clash.
The point keeps Swansea hovering around the play-off places while Forest drop to 15th following their fourth successive league game without a win.
Ben Osborn had a pair of chances to send Forest into the lead as the visitors found joy down Swansea's left flank.
The winger could only skew a shot wide of the goal after being set up by Saidy Janko, and then moments later he failed to fully capitalise on a mistake from Jay Fulton as he gave Erwin Mulder an easy save.
The game was held up for five minutes after Fulton needed treatment for a head injury sustained in an aerial duel with Jack Robinson.
Once the game had resumed Swansea showed signs of attacking intent as Bersant Celina and Oli McBurnie began to link in the final third.
Scottish striker McBurnie, who has more Championship goals in 2018 than any other player, almost latched on to a Celina flick to put the hosts ahead, but he failed to make contact with the ball as Costel Pantilimon loomed large.
Osborn had a third opportunity to break the deadlock after Robinson's deflected shot landed at his feet, but Mulder reacted to parry his effort away.
Janko crashed through Celina to earn a booking as a lacklustre first half came to an end.
The Swans flew out of the blocks after the restart and almost caught Karanka's men cold. Declan John roamed up the left wing and found Yan Dhanda, who saw his fierce shot palmed to safety by Pantilimon.
Osborn started the second half where he left off in the first - with another glaring miss. The ball arrived at his feet eight yards out with nobody near him, but once again he fired wide of the goal.
Half-time substitute Joel Asoro almost capped off a Swansea break with a goal after Dhanda and Barrie McKay combined to put him in behind the Forest defence.
He managed to get a shot on target, but Pantilimon closed down the space to block the ball behind.
A makeshift Swansea XI looked to have established control of the game when McKay fired wide from the edge of the box, but the visitors had chances to snatch it at the death.
Joao Carvalho lifted the ball over the defence for Lewis Grabban, but it would not sit up for the striker to unleash a shot.
Gil Dias was then picked out on the edge of the box from an Osborn corner and sent a volley towards the bottom corner.
However, Mulder got his fingers to the ball to push it around the post as Swansea weathered the storm to pick up a point.
Graham Potter: "We have had two battling performances where we've been really up against it and come away with four points. The challenge for us is to improve our overall play, but we keep getting knock-backs which doesn't help with consistency.
"We have 12 points and we know we need to get better heading into two really tough away fixtures."
Aitor Karanka: "We could have scored towards the end of the game, but I felt if we made one mistake they could have scored. We could have won this game but the most important thing was to show team spirit and our hunger after Brentford.
"Without the ball, we pressed and caused them problems in possession. We need to keep this consistency and keep this intensity because we are sure to score goals with the quality we have. We missed chances today but this is normal when you are tired."
