Dyche frustrated as Forest squander 'golden chances' in Sturm Graz draw
Nottingham Forest had a host of chances but were unable to score in a goalless draw with Sturm Graz in the Europa League.
Sean Dyche was left frustrated as Nottingham Forest squandered "golden chances" in a goalless Europa League draw away to Sturm Graz on Thursday.
Forest accumulated 1.41 expected goals (xG) to their opponents' meagre 0.07 as neither side could find the decisive goal at Merkur Arena.
Ryan Yates saw a header cleared off the line by Emir Karic in the 16th minute, before Morgan Gibbs-White had a penalty saved by Oliver Christensen before the interval.
In between those chances, Maurice Malone pounced on the rebound of Otar Kiteishvili's parried attempt to tap home, but his finish was ruled out by a quick offside flag.
Nicolas Dominguez's long-range strike then bounced off the angle of post and crossbar in the dying seconds, leaving Dyche unsure how to process a point on the road.
"I think it’s both frustration and being pleased with a point," Dyche said. "We’re obviously threadbare.
"On the other hand, the frustrating 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 were 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."
Forest did manage to keep their second clean sheet in their last 24 games in all competitions – both have been in the Europa League under Dyche (against Porto and this outing).
In fact, Dyche is just the fourth English manager to keep a clean sheet in each of his first two Europa League matches, along with Alan Pardew, Gary Neville and Graham Potter since detailed data collection began in this competition in 2009-10.
Forest have faced just four shots on target and an xG of only 0.67 in Europe since Dyche took charge.
That is in clear contrast to the nine shots on target and 2.59 xG conceded in their two Europa League games under Ange Postecoglou.
Dyche still would have liked more from his side, who next host Leeds United in a potential relegation six-pointer in the Premier League.
"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," he added.
"More so with Kali [Arnaud Kalimuendo]; 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."
