Nottingham Forest 0-1 Burnley: Zeki Amdouni scores winner

Zeki AmdouniImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Zeki Amdouni scored his first goal for Burnley since joining in the summer

Substitute Zeki Amdouni struck a cool, last-minute winner as Burnley edged past Nottingham Forest to reach the third round of the Carabao Cup.

Switzerland international Amdouni delightfully controlled Josh Brownhill's pass before firing a finish past Matt Turner for the winning goal and one of only two shots on target in the entire contest.

It gave Vincent Kompany's side their first victory of the season and sent four-time winners Forest out of the competition at the first hurdle.

With 11 minutes added on, Steve Cooper's side pushed for an equaliser to take the game to penalties, but Burnley held firm to put their name in the hat for the next round.

Debutant Wilson Odobert could have added a second late on when through on goal, but the French teenager's low shot was kept out by Turner's save.

In all, it was a rather drab contest - Cheikhou Kouyate blazed over from the edge of the box for the hosts and visiting skipper Brownhill curled narrowly over as neither side managed a shot on target in a poor first half.

Burnley's best chance of the second half fell to debutant Jacob Bruun Larsen, who latched onto Brownhill's cross-field ball but dragged his shot wide.

Forest skipper Ryan Yates could have won it with 12 minutes remaining but sent his flying header the wrong side of the post from 10 yards out.

Nathan Redmond was lively on his first start for the club and showed some eye-catching touches in the final third, but could not provide the finish to match his approach play.

On a couple of occasions, the former Besiktas winger made a jinking run towards the edge of the box but then shanked his effort horribly wide.

Despite the victory, Kompany will be concerned by a serious-looking injury to defender Hjalmar Ekdal, who was carried off on a stretcher following a collision in the box.

Summer signing Aaron Ramsey and Vitinho also limped off to leave Burnley with injury issues to deal with before Saturday's Premier League game against Tottenham at Turf Moor.

Burnley manager Vincent Kompany: "Based on the performance, we would have always been pleased to get what we deserve, a result and clean sheet. A good win for the lads and into another round.

"Zeki has got a real goal threat, hopefully that is one of many. That is one exciting thing about our squad, there is potential for the future too.

"One [injury] I think will be bad, it looked like it. I will take any positive news on Ekdal. We hope Vitinho is not too bad. It looks a knee for both, for Ekdal we hope it is not going to be too bad. He was in a lot of pain. There was a cost to this game for sure."

Nottingham Forest manager Steve Cooper: "We got what we deserved in terms of the result. It does not need details today, it needs the basic fact that we fell short of our performance levels collectively and individually.

"It wasn't a great game, it had 0-0 written all over it but I didn't feel we would concede. Technically we were miles off it today.

"It is something we need to look at, people will say we made a few changes but whether you have played the last few games or not, you have to be prepared to play. There is no reason why players should not hit the ground running with performance levels."

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