Nottingham Forest 3 Brighton and Hove Albion 1
Albion suffered one of their heaviest defeats of the season despite going ahead after Forest missed an early penalty.
Neco Williams was brought down by Pervis Estupinan after 10 minutes – but Jason Steele saved Brennan Johnson’s penalty.
Albion then had great chances to score through Kaoru Mitoma and most notably Julio Enciso who saw his virtually point-blank range effort pushed away by veteran Forest keeper Keylor Navas.
Albion took the lead just after Johnson spurned another chance for Forest, dragging a shot wide while under pressure from Dunk.
Albion took the lead after good work from Solly March – his cross saw Navas palm the ball into the path of Facundo Buonanotte who, on his full Premier League debut, put Albion in front.
The Seagulls looked liked going into the break in front – but a hopeful cross by Renan Lodi took a huge deflection off Pascal Gross and beat Steele to restore parity at half time at 1-1.
Forest deep in a relegation battle, looked much hungrier than Albion after the break although the Seagulls nearly restored their lead when Buonanotte raced forward and released Mitoma who was for once guilty of a bad miss.
After a long and worrying injury to Forest midfielder and penalty winner Williams, Forest brought on Cheikhou Kouyate. He was involved was Moises Caicedo uncharacteristically lost the ball. This allowed Taino Awoniyi to feed the Brazilian Danilo who planted a shot past Steele for 2-1.
As time ticked on, Navas made a great save from March and both teams had a shout for a penalty for hand ball – neither was given – then right at the death another penalty incident. Dunk was adjudged to have handled.
This time the Aussie referee was invited to the pitchside monitor and adjudged the offence had taken place and Morgan Gibbs-White put Forest 3-1 ahead.
In stoppage time, nearly 15 minutes of it, mostly due to Willlams injury, Deniz Undav – on as a substitute for Enciso – saw what would have been his first Premier League goal ruled out for offside.
Albion next take on Wolves in the Premier League on Saturday (29 April) at the Amex.
The Seagulls remain in eighth place but are now four points behind Tottenham and Liverpool although they have two games in hand on both.
