The City Ground, home of Nottingham Forest, on the banks of the River Trent
International Football

Jay Dasilva Ends a 25-Year Wait as Coventry Win at the City Ground: Forest 0-1 Coventry

Jay Dasilva's 55th-minute goal — Coventry's first of the season, after 340 minutes without one — gave Frank Lampard's side their first Premier League win in 25 years: Nottingham Forest 0-1 Coventry City.

By Guriball Newsroom · September 19, 2026 · 4 min read

Coventry City had not won a top-flight match in a quarter of a century, and they had not scored a single Premier League goal all season heading into Saturday's trip to the City Ground. Jay Dasilva's second-half strike fixed both problems at once, giving Frank Lampard's side a first Premier League win since their relegation in 2001 and lifting them off the bottom of the table.

Dasilva's goal, set up by his own goalkeeper

The goal, in the 55th minute, came from an unlikely source. Coventry goalkeeper Carl Rushworth picked out Dasilva with a long pass forward, and the left-back snuck around the back of Forest's defence, steamed towards goal and fired a left-footed shot beyond Matz Sels and into the corner of the net. It was Coventry's first goal in the Premier League this season, arriving after four straight defeats without troubling the scoresheet.

A disallowed leveller deep into stoppage time

  1. 86' — substitute Igor Jesus wins the ball around Caleb Yirenkyi and turns towards the Coventry goal
  2. Jesus finishes from close range, and the City Ground celebrates what looks like a leveller
  3. Referee Jarred Gillett is sent to the pitchside monitor for a VAR review
  4. The goal is ruled out: Jesus is judged to have fouled Yirenkyi in the build-up, and the score stays 0-1

Coventry climb off the bottom

Coventry went into the round bottom of the Premier League without a point, having lost all four of their opening matches and conceded ten goals without scoring one — a run that included a 5-0 defeat at home to Brighton the previous week. The win took Frank Lampard's side to three points, enough to leapfrog both Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur, and gave a newly promoted side their first taste of Premier League victory since returning to the top flight this season.

A setback for Glasner's Forest

For Nottingham Forest, the defeat interrupted a promising run under Oliver Glasner, who had won his first match in charge the previous weekend against Aston Villa. Forest went into the game 12th with five points from four matches — a win, two draws and a defeat — and the loss to newly promoted Coventry leaves them exactly where they started the round, still searching for the consistency to push up the table.

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