Nottingham Forest fans crush ‘absolute cart horse’ Lorenzo Lucca after ‘God awful’ display vs Midtjylland

Lorenzo Lucca failed to make an impression from the bench as Nottingham Forest lost to FC Midtjylland in the Europa League last 16 on Thursday.

Vitor Pereira’s team were beaten 1-0 late on when Cho Gue-Sung nodded home the winner at the City Ground.

The Premier League side must now go to Denmark next week and win for a chance to progress to the quarter-finals.

Lucca arrived from Napoli in January on an initial loan deal with an obligation to buy for a package deal totalling around £33million.

Nottingham Forest’s form has taken a nose-dive, with Pereira’s side now without a win in their last five across all competitions.

Nottingham Forest fans fume over Lorenzo Lucca

Nottingham Forest have been without last season’s top scorer Chris Wood since October, after he underwent knee surgery.

The forward scored 20 goals in the Premier League last season, and his absence has been catastrophic.

Igor Jesus arrived in the summer and has impressed in Europe, but after 28 league appearances, he still has just two goals to his name.

Nottingham Forest fans slammed Jesus for his performance on Thursday, and Lucca received similar treatement.

The 25-year-old was absent again when he came on against Midtjylland, completing just one pass in 21 minutes of action.

He took one shot, which went off target, and had only five touches of the ball. Nottingham Forest fans were left fuming by the display, and took to social media to voice their frustrations.

“Lucca is an absolute cart horse,” wrote one fan. “Perfect Dyche player”.

Another targeted both strikers, and wrote: “Rather have the wooden plank in my garden up front than Lucca and Jesus. God awful both of them”.

One X user wrote: “Whether you’re a person of faith, or not, please pray, manifest, chant, etc., for the swift return of Chris Wood.

“A striker with more positional sense in his little toe than either Jesus or Lucca have in their entire bodies.”

Nottingham Forest are not playing to Lucca’s strengths

It does not help that, after just days at the City Ground, Lucca found himself playing under a different manager than the one who had bought him.

And Pereira does not appear to be aware of Lucca’s strengths yet. The Italian’s height was utilised by Udinese last season when he scored 12 league goals. Crosses to him were frequent and of high quality.

The Italian will not get the same space he got in Serie A, but the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Neco Williams have no excuse not to fire crosses into him.

That is simply not what Lucca is getting at Nottingham Forest, and until he does, it is unlikely that he finds his feet.

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