Forest ready to take on the Royals

By Callum Castel-Nuovo

Nottingham Forest head down south this weekend to face Reading, where the reds will be looking to jump into the top half of the Championship and edge closer to the play-off places.

Forest come into this game off the back of an impressive 3-0 victory over Preston at the City Ground to register a sixth win in ten games since the departure of Chris Hughton. After handing Bournemouth their first defeat of the season, Preston will have arrived at the City Ground in high hopes, but Forest had different ideas. A brace from Lewis Grabban and a first-time volley from Jack Colback saw the reds send Preston back up north with no points to their name as Forest leapfrogged the Lilywhites.

Heading into the international break with three goals and three points, reds fans were over the moon, and some took to social media to express their joy. One fan stated, “Great win after a strong display, well done Forest!” as another fan went on to say, “Three points, three goals and a clean sheet. Up them red men!” Reds boss Steve Cooper made four changes to the side including Max Lowe’s return from being ineligible against his parent club and Philip Zinckernagel, Alex Mighten and Lewis Grabban coming back into the starting fold. The Forest manager will have been impressed with how his side performed after shifting players around and even playing a different formation in 4-2-3-1. Though Cooper was delighted with the ruthlessness Forest displayed by putting chances away, in his post-match interview the Forest head coach admitted that the team has showed better positional play and possession in previous games, hinting that there is always room for improvement. Comments like this will delight Forest fans with everything that Steve Cooper has implemented since being the manager of the club. The urge to find improvements from a 3-0 win shows the hunger and desire of the club right now.

No real injury updates other than Loïc Mbe Soh’s recent setback while recovering from the long-term injury that he suffered on the first game of the season against Coventry. Steve Cooper commented on the injury; “It's a real pity for him, he showed an excellent attitude towards returning to playing, nobody's done anything wrong and it's an unfortunate situation. We're still trying to find out the results in terms of how long he's going to be out for, but I feel for him because he's a young boy. His time will come." A return from Mbe Soh would only boost the team with the defender having bags of potential and would give Cooper the option to shuffle the back line around.

As for Reading, the Royals welcome Forest to the Madejski off the back of their first win in five games away at Birmingham. After losing four games in a row, their 2-1 victory now seems even more important with the recent six-point deduction Reading received this week having breached financial rules. This deduction sees the Berkshire club down in 19th just four points away from the relegation zone and with no clean sheet in five games, Reading will be looking to come back to the Championship in good form now that the international break is over.

Readings top goalscorer, John Swift will be one to watch out for in this game. As well as netting eight goals from midfield so far this season, the playmaker also has seven assists to his name after adding one to his tally last time out against Birmingham. 18-year-old Jahmari Clarke earned his highest minutes in one game against Birmingham also after coming on at half time, scoring two goals in 45 minutes to earn Reading their first win in five. If that goal scoring threat wasn’t enough for Forest to worry about, the Royals secured the signing of former Newcastle striker Andy Carroll who has a total of 54 Premier League goals and is no stranger to the Championship either.

Having said that, how do we expect this game to go?

Although Reading have plenty of firepower up front, nine of the ten goals scored by winning teams across Readings last five home games have come in the second half. In fact, Reading went on a three-game winning streak at home recently and each game saw a goalless first half, and low-scoring first halves are common between Reading and Forest in recent times, with the last 11 meetings containing a half-time scoreline of 0-0 or 1-0. There also hasn’t been a game between the clubs that had more than two goals in the full 90 minutes over the last seven meetings.

Even though the two teams are separated by six places in the league, without Readings point deduction the clubs would only be separated by goal difference. Both sides possess real quality players, and the table may be doing them a disservice. However, in terms of form, Reading are currently the second worst team in the league over the last five games whilst Forest are up in tenth. With Reading aiming to pluck themselves back away from the relegation zone and Forest looking to propel closer to the play-off places, both teams will be battling hard for all three points. Having said that, a history of low scoring affairs, particularly in the first half – suggests this will be a tight affair and may leave fans praying for their team to score the first goal as that might just decide the tie.

In a game that could be level at half-time and scrappy in the second half, my personal prediction is a late Forest goal to take the points. Reading 0-1 Nottingham Forest.

Current form:

• Reading: LLLLW

• Nottingham Forest: WLDDW

Previous match day line-ups:

• Reading: Southwood, Holmes, Dann, Moore, Yiadom, Dele-Bashiru (Camara 81), Laurent, Ejaria, Baba, Swift, Puscas (Clarke 46)

• Nottingham Forest: Samba, Spence, Worrall, McKenna, Lowe, Yates, Colback, Johnson, Zinckernagel (Garner 68), Mighten (Lolley 63), Grabban (Taylor 71)

Venue & time:

Madejski Stadium, Saturday 20th November 2021. 15:00 KO.