Cole Palmer and Bukayo Saka beaten to October Player of the Month award by history-maker

Chris Wood has become the first Nottingham Forest player to win the Premier League’s Player of the Month award.

The burly striker has enjoyed a prolific start to the season and scored half of his eight Premier League goals in an individually and collectively triumphant month of October.

Thanks largely to the reliable output of their talisman, Forest have enjoyed a three-match winning streak. Nuno Espirito Santo’s side climbed to the lofty heights of third place in the Premier League table with a 3-0 win over West Ham United last weekend. Naturally, Wood scored the opener in that victory.

The Premier League have named a standout player at the end of each month since August 1994, when Tottenham Hotspur’s Jurgen Klinsmann marked his first few weeks in England with the inaugural individual honour. Forest finished third that season and have spent five subsequent campaigns in England’s top flight without a single player at the club ever earning that particular award.

A swollen total of 35 other clubs can boast at least one Player of the Month prior to Wood’s recognition.

However, if the New Zealand international had it his way, the award would surely have been shared among his teammates. After netting twice against Leicester City in his final October appearance, Wood insisted: “It’s all down to the team, they supply me with a lot of chances and I have to be ready to put them away. But if it wasn’t for my teammates…

“I’m not one that’s going to beat four players and stick it in the top corner,” Wood shrugged, “I rely on the service of my teammates and they just keep delivering for me.”

Wood certainly deserves some of the credit for putting those chances away. The towering forward’s clinical displays saw him beat out the likes of Chelsea’s Cole Palmer, Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Manchester City’s prolific defender Josko Gvardiol for October’s individual prize.