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Wood return boosts Forest for Pereira's reunion with Porto
The Guardian
|April 09, 2026
Striker available for tonight's quarter-final first leg in Portugal after missing past 34 matches through injury
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 yesterday 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.
Wood 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.
It had been 215 days since he scored twice on the opening day of the season in victory against Brentford. That was when Nuno Espirito Santo was still in charge and remarkably eight months on he is still the last Forest striker to score a league goal at home.
This story is from the April 09, 2026 edition of The Guardian.
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