Nottingham Forest beat 10-man Exeter on penalties as Devon double denied

At 11.04pm, at last there was a result, Nottingham Forest avoiding an FA Cup upset against 10-man Exeter City after prevailing from the final fourth-round tie via a 4-2 penalty shootout victory. Neco Williams scored the decisive penalty after Matz Sels, who replaced Carlos Miguel midway through the second half, saved from Reece Cole before Angus MacDonald blasted his spot-kick against the crossbar. It was an absorbing contest – locals craned their necks from the windows of the terrace houses on St James Road to get the best view – but a cruel crescendo for third-tier Exeter.

Forest had a man advantage for 53 minutes after Ed Turns was given a straight red card for a high challenge on Morgan Gibbs-White, 23 of which were in second-half stoppage time after Taiwo Awoniyi suffered a head injury. At the end Awoniyi was well enough to salute the Forest fans, some of whom will do well to return home by 4am.

For Forest, this was about resuming business after a week-long warm-weather training camp in Dubai. Forest’s players spent plenty of time training on pristine pitches but also enjoyed a period of downtime, including a session platform diving in the name of team bonding. Nuno Espírito Santo showed his squad how it was done, diving headfirst into the water with barely a splash. Forest hoped to depart Devon with similar ease. Ola Aina, among the first-team regulars spared this trip, soon followed, socks and all. Nuno, however, had a contingency plan and named seven of his starting lineup from the 7-0 demolition of Brighton on the bench here.

The motivation for Exeter was a fifth-round tie at home to Ipswich, the obvious inspiration 45 miles west along the A38, after Plymouth shocked Liverpool. The gulf between Exeter and Forest is even bigger, with Nuno’s side the highest-ranked team left in the competition and 58 places separating these clubs in the league pyramid. But for the 10 intervening minutes between Josh Magennis’s opener after Miguel’s blunder and Ramón Sosa’s equaliser, Exeter, whose manager, Gary Caldwell, won the Cup with Wigan in 2013, began to believe they could join Plymouth and a handful of elite clubs in the last 16. The words were there in black and white along the bottom of a throbbing Big Bank terrace as the players emerged from the tunnel before kick-off. “From the heart of Exeter to the stage of glory – create history,” read a banner.

It was a window of dreams. By the time Awoniyi dispatched a fine left-footed shot into the bottom corner on 37 minutes, Forest had re-established normal order and long since asserted their authority. They recovered from Miguel’s error on only his third start of the season, the Brazilian fumbling a routine Demetri Mitchell ball into the box to present Magennis with a chance to pounce from close range. Sosa rode a couple of weak Exeter challenges to level before Awoniyi earned Forest the lead, picking his spot from the edge of the box. Ibrahim Sangaré exhibited a couple of fine touches, Ryan Yates kept things ticking over beside him at the base of midfield. Danilo was the only survivor from the trouncing of Brighton.

Josh Magennis celebrates scoring the first of his two goals; Magennis also scored a penalty in the shootout. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA

Yates squandered a chance to open up a two-goal buffer for Forest in first-half stoppage time and a few minutes into the second period Forest were back at square one. Miguel pushed away Magennis’s initial header from Ed Francis’s spinning corner towards the back post, but with the Forest goalkeeper grounded the Exeter captain, alert in the box, thrashed another shot goalwards and Willy Boly inadvertently sliced his clearance in off a post. Miguel was forced off with an apparent injury just before the hour, seemingly incurred in the buildup to Exeter’s equaliser. Matz Sels, outstanding in the Premier League this season, entered and his first notable contribution was to repel an Ilmari Niskanen shot a couple of minutes later.

Forest struggled to regain quite the same sense of control. Nuno recognised as much and introduced Elliot Anderson and Gibbs-White in place of Yates and Sangaré. Both provided the desired spark. Within three minutes Anderson rattled a shot against the side netting and soon afterwards he combined with Gibbs-White. Gibbs-White sent a sumptuous pass twirling towards Anderson with the outside of his right boot and, after receiving the ball back from Anderson, sent a shot at Joe Whitworth, the Exeter goalkeeper on loan from Crystal Palace.

Forest seemed inhibited by their one-man advantage but continued to carve out several chances. Jota Silva smacked the crossbar in the dying seconds of stoppage time after pickpocketing Caleb Watts inside the Exeter box and Forest kept Whitworth busy throughout extra time. Both managers exhausted their six substitutes, permitted after Awoniyi’s concussion substitution. By the end Exeter’s three-man central defence comprised Magennis, a veteran striker, Niskanen, a wing-back, and MacDonald, who had a flawless debut but for his penalty smacking the woodwork.