Nottingham Forest's disastrous start to their 2021/22 Championship campaign continued on Saturday, as Chris Hughton's side suffered their fourth league defeat in as many matches.

Starting the season slowly has become something of a trait for Forest in recent seasons, with a Sabri Lamouchi led side also falling to defeat in their opening four games last time out.

However, with Dane Murphy being appointed as the club's new CEO earlier this summer, and subsequently the club being linked with a number of exciting young talents, things had appeared to be on the up at the City Ground ahead of the new Championship campaign.

Despite this, results on the pitch have been extremely disappointing - to put it lightly - with the latest result, a 1-0 defeat to Stoke City, leaving the Garibaldi rooted to the bottom of the second tier table.

As it to be expected following a loss, there were a number of below-par performances from Hughton's side on Saturday, although it was Lyle Taylor's efforts - or lack thereof - that most caught the eye against the Potters.

Indeed, over the 31-year-old's 71 minutes on the pitch, he managed no shots either on or off target, completed five of his 10 attempted passes, failed with his one attempted cross and touched the ball a grand total of 18 times.

The £720k-rated man also gave away possession of the ball on 11 occasions, lost all of his eight duels and was flagged offside once.

These returns saw the Montserrat international earn a SofaScore match rating of just 6.3, the third-worst rating of any player to feature in the game.

As such, with his side struggling at the wrong end of the table, it is undeniable that Taylor simply must start contributing more for his team in order to help them get back to winning ways, or else Forest could well find themselves in a relegation scrap come the end of the season.

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