Chris Wood recovery boosts Nottingham Forest for Pereira’s return to Porto

The New Zealand striker provides a welcome boost as Forest face crunch games in the league and in Europe

Nobody has scored more goals in the Europa League this season than Igor Jesus and yet the overwhelming source of interest surrounding Nottingham Forest on arrival in northern Portugal on Wednesday was another striker. Only Erling Haaland, Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak outscored Chris Wood in the Premier League last season and the New Zealand frontman has been slowly building fitness and working towards a long-awaited first-team return.

All eyes were on Wood at last weekend’s interactive open-training session, staged at the City Ground. He has been ticking off different targets since knee surgery in December and at the end of last month the 34-year-old made a welcome goalscoring comeback 11 minutes into his return to action for Forest under-21s against Newcastle, in modest surroundings at Loughborough University’s stadium in front of a crowd totalling a couple of hundred: students, Forest fans, a few from the north-east.