Nottingham Forest records are a strange and wonderful collection, because they were set by four completely different football clubs wearing the same red shirt: the Victorian amateurs who put 14 past a London side, the Edwardian First Division team who scored 12 in an afternoon, the Brian Clough side who rewrote what an English club could do in Europe, and the Premier League operation now spending nine figures under Oliver Glasner. Some of the numbers below are more than a century old and will almost certainly never be beaten. Others were reset this summer.
Here are the ones every Forest supporter should know.
The biggest win in Nottingham Forest records: 14-0 v Clapton
The Reds’ record victory came in the FA Cup first round in January 1891, away at Clapton, and it finished 14-0. It remains the biggest away win in the history of the competition — a record that has stood for more than 130 years and is not going anywhere. Clapton were a strong amateur side of the era; they simply ran into a Forest team that had not yet turned professional but were about to.
For context on how differently the game was played then: Forest were still five years away from moving to the City Ground, and the club’s first major trophy, the 1898 FA Cup, was seven years down the line.
The record league win: 12-0 v Leicester Fosse
Eighteen years later came the result that Nottingham folklore has never let go of. In April 1909, Forest beat Leicester Fosse — the club that would become Leicester City — 12-0 in the First Division. It is still the Reds’ record league win, and it remains one of the heaviest defeats in top-flight English history.
What has kept the story alive is the aftermath. The scale of the result prompted an FA inquiry, after claims that several Leicester players had spent the previous day at a team-mate’s wedding. The FA concluded the result was legitimate; the players’ preparation, it was accepted, had been less than ideal. Forest were already safe. Leicester were relegated.
The heaviest defeat: 1-9 at Blackburn Rovers
Every club has one of these. Forest’s came in April 1937, a 9-1 hammering away at Blackburn Rovers in the Second Division, and it is comfortably the worst afternoon in the club’s history. The Reds finished that season in the bottom half of the second tier, a long way from the side who would be champions of Europe 42 years later.
The record crowd at the City Ground: 49,946
The largest attendance ever recorded at the City Ground is 49,946, for a First Division match against Manchester United in October 1967 — a figure from the era of vast standing terraces that the modern all-seater ground, at just over 30,000, cannot approach.
That may not be permanent. Forest’s proposed expansion would take the City Ground towards roughly 52,500, which would finally put the 1967 record within reach. The plans are still awaiting a decision. If you want the full picture of how the ground got to its current shape, our guide to the City Ground’s capacity, stands and history runs through each stand in turn.
The Clough-era records that defined the club
The records that made Forest famous worldwide were all set in a five-year burst between 1977 and 1980.
- 42 league games unbeaten — from November 1977 to December 1978, an English record at the time. It stood for 26 years until Arsenal’s 49. The full story of the run is here.
- League champions as a newly promoted side — the 1977-78 title, won at the first attempt after promotion, a feat only a handful of clubs in English history have managed.
- Back-to-back European Cups — Malmö beaten in Munich in 1979, Hamburg in Madrid in 1980. Forest have won the European Cup more times than they have won the English league title, which remains one of football’s great statistical oddities. The story of 1979 and 1980 is the club’s defining record of all.
- Britain’s first £1m footballer — Trevor Francis, signed from Birmingham City in February 1979, then scored the winning goal in the European Cup final four months later.
The individual records
Two club records have gone untouched for over half a century. Bob McKinlay holds the appearance record, with 692 games between 1951 and 1970 — a figure no modern player will get near. Grenville Morris, who played either side of 1900, is the club’s leading scorer. Our rundowns of Forest’s most-used players and the all-time top goalscorers have the full lists.
The modern records: the ones that keep moving
The transfer records are the only ones on this list being rewritten regularly. Forest’s record signing is Liam Delap, bought from Chelsea in August 2026 for a club-record fee the Nottingham Post reports as £45m. He scored his first goal for the club in the 2-1 win at Aston Villa this month and told BBC Sport that joining had been a “great decision”, as reported by the Nottingham Post.
The record sale is a far bigger number. Elliot Anderson’s move to Manchester City this summer was worth a reported £116m — money that funded roughly £101m of incomings across five first-team additions. For the full rankings, see Forest’s most expensive signings and the biggest fees the club has received.
And one record that has just been broken
Not every Forest record is a happy one, and the Reds ended a miserable little streak on 12 September. Glasner’s side won 2-1 at Villa Park through Delap’s opener and Igor Jesus’s late finish — Forest’s first win there since 1994, and the head coach’s first victory since arriving from Crystal Palace in July. It also extended a personal record for Glasner, who is now eight games unbeaten against Aston Villa across his spells at Palace and Forest.
Records, in other words, are not only a museum exhibit at this club. Forest sit on five points from four games with Coventry City visiting the City Ground on Saturday 19 September, and a stadium expansion decision pending that could yet put a 1967 attendance figure back in play.
