All Whites striker Chris Wood is grabbing headlines across the English Premier League, after scoring seven goals in nine games this season. His brace last Saturday took Nottingham Forest into seventh, with Wood scoring 69% of the team’s goals. The 32-year-old talked with Michael Burgess about the beginning of his personal renaissance across an eventful 2023-24 season.
By any measure, Chris Wood is having the time of his life.
The All Whites striker has had some great periods before in England but nothing quite like this. After a quarter of the English Premier League season, only two players, including Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (11), have more goals than the New Zealander (7). Wood is ahead of the likes of Liverpool’s Mo Salah and England striker Ollie Watkins, and has the league’s best goal conversion rate, with his tally coming from just 18 shots.
But Wood has been on a hot streak since mid-December last year when manager Nuno Espirito Santo took over at Nottingham Forest. He has scored 18 goals in 25 games since Nuno’s appointment – only Norwegian superstar Haaland and Chelsea gun Cole Palmer have managed more league goals in the same period.
Wood’s resurgence has been remarkable, coming off the back of a challenging two-year period. He was under the microscope at Newcastle United – after a huge transfer fee to go there (£25 million) – and had only 19 starts (four goals) in a year at the club, then scored once in his first seven games at Forest before injury ended that campaign in early March 2023.
Wood was restricted to a bench role for the first half of last season, with just four starts in the first 17 games. Everything changed with the arrival of Nuno, who decided Wood was his key man.
“It was a good [season] but a different one,” Wood tells the Herald about the 2023-24 campaign when he scored 14 league goals, his equal-best season tally. “I played most of my football come Christmas onwards, when the new manager came in. Under Steve [Cooper], I wasn’t really playing too much. I wouldn’t say [Nuno] took a chance on me, but at the beginning, he put me in and it has worked out well for both of us.”
In an exclusive interview, Wood joined the Herald to look back on the start of his renaissance last season.
August 18, 2023: Nottingham Forest 2 Sheffield United 1
In the second match of the season, Wood came off the bench to score the decisive goal, with an angled header.
I was coming back from the biggest injury I’ve ever had [hamstring]. I only came on in the 84th minute. The other striker obviously had a lot of faith in the manager put into him and he was scoring goals and that’s how it works at the time. So I only got a little time on the pitch but it was nice to pop up with a goal, to get our first win of the season, in the first home game.
October 21, 2023: Nottingham Forest 2 Luton 2
Wood had a bench role for almost two months, before a vital brace against Luton, which included an impressive dinked left-foot finish.
It was my second start of the season. It was nice to be involved from the beginning, which is what all footballers want. It shows; you get many more chances when doing that. Coming off the bench for 10 or 15 minutes is very difficult; it’s all about the game situation and awareness of what to do. It was nice to get a double, even though that game ended sourly when we conceded late.
December 23, 2023: Nottingham Forest 2 Bournemouth 3
In Nuno’s first game in charge, Wood provided an assist and a goal, although Bournemouth grabbed a late winner.
December 26, 2023: Newcastle United 1 Nottingham Forest 3
Wood started again three days later and scored a hat-trick at St James Park, all with his left foot, becoming just the fourth player in Premier League history to achieve a triple against a former club.
It was a very interesting time at the club. The new manager had just come in, four or five days before we played Bournemouth. And you never know where you stand – it’s all about who is going to play. Everybody’s looking sharp in training because they want to impress the new manager. People that haven’t been involved now have a new lease of life and you just never know where the game’s going to take you.
Thankfully the manager had faith in me to play me and it turned out to be one of the best games of the season for me. It was bittersweet, obviously, against Newcastle because I have a lot of friends still there and it was just under a year since I’d been there.
The second goal was one of best of Wood’s career, as he ran on to a pass from deep, turned a defender inside out, then chipped keeper Martin Dubravka.
It was one of my favourites. It’s not often I take on a player or two and then put it in the back of the net. I’m normally an instinct finisher, two touches. It was a nice one to turn Dan Burns and dink it over Martin.
The third showed his confidence, as he beat the offside trap, before coolly rounding the keeper.
When you’re in that mindset, when you’re having a good game and when you’re scoring, everything’s instinct-based. I didn’t really think about it too much when I was in front of the keeper; your instincts take over to show you what the right thing to do is. Then with VAR, I had a nervous wait for it.
January 20, 2024: Brentford 3 Nottingham Forest 2
Wood notched his fifth goal in four games, with a deft header into the far corner.
It’s a typical finish of mine – from crosses into the box – and it was a beautiful ball by Callum Hudson-Odoi. With the pace on the ball, all you need to do is guide it, so it makes the job of a striker a lot easier.
March 16, 2024: Luton 2 Nottingham Forest 2
After six weeks out injured, Wood returned with a double – including a precise volleyed finish from a swift counter-attack.
It was a massive game for us, one we needed to win to give ourselves a bit of breathing space. Unfortunately, we didn’t win but we should have, with the amount of chances we created – we should have put a few more away. [Midfielder] Morgan Gibbs-White is a fantastic player, he picked me out with his cross without even looking. That’s the relationship and the partnership we’ve built over the last year or so. It’s great playing with a player like that.
March 30, 2024: Crystal Palace 1 Nottingham Forest 1
Wood managed an audacious looping backwards header – from a difficult angle – to secure a vital away draw.
I haven’t scored too many goals like that. When it’s coming like that, you have a snap look to see where the keeper is positioned, and you can see he’s a bit further forward, so you’re thinking you have to go far post, there’s no way you can go near. You’re just thinking get contact and trying to put it as far as you can towards that far corner.
Luckily, it worked out well. Sometimes they go in and sometimes they don’t. There’s been a lot of times where I’ve tried something like that, thinking the keeper is going to come out and just flicked it straight into his hands.
April 2, 2024: Nottingham 3 Fulham 1
Wood scored for the third match in succession, with a strike from almost 25 metres.
It comes back to the instinct of knowing what’s right in that moment. When I took the touch and opened it up, I had Anthony [Elanga] there for a slip pass – I could have put it in – but it just felt right to hit it and it caught [Bernd] Leno off guard a little bit. It was nice to score from outside the box, only the third or fourth time in the Premier League for me.
April 7, 2024: Spurs 3 Nottingham Forest 1
Wood netted for the fourth consecutive match but also missed a glaring opportunity at 1-1, hitting the post from two metres out.
It was nice to keep the consistent run going but I also missed a chance that I should have put away. That’s the highs and lows of football. The keeper was diving across to make it difficult, so you try to hit it hard and high, to keep it out of reach. But unfortunately it hit the post and went miles back.
But that’s life; that’s football. You’ve got to smile and move on because you know there’s another chance coming around the corner. You can’t worry about those sort of things. If you do, you’ll end up missing the next opportunity. You’ll be thinking about missing again when all you want to do is think about scoring. You can’t change it now, so move on and be ready.
May 19, 2024: Burnley 1 Nottingham Forest 2
Wood’s return to Turf Moor was a dream, with two early goals, including a clever deflection of a teammate’s shot, to confirm Forest had avoided relegation.
Burnley is a big part of my life. I had great times there, great friendships and great bonds with the fans. Going back to another club is one of those things; you have to do your job for your new club. Luckily enough, within 15 minutes, I’d scored two and the end of the season’s feeling good.
The second goal was about trying to be in the right place. As a striker, you know where players are going to shoot. So you try and put yourself in a position where if they miss, whether by an inch or a metre, you’re there to divert the ball or change the direction.
Chris Wood at Nottingham Forest:
League games: 47
Starts: 34
Goals: 22
Premier League scorers since December 23, 2023.
Erling Haaland (Manchester City) 23
Cole Palmer (Chelsea) 22
Chris Wood (Forest) 18
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns. A football aficionado, Burgess will never forget the noise that greeted Rory Fallon’s goal against Bahrain in Wellington in 2009.
