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Preview Percy has unearthed lots of interesting stuff this week. Unfortunately he hasn’t seen fit to include any of it in his look at Saturday’s trip to Nottingham Forest...

Next up we make the trek up the M1 to the town of West Bridgford where we will be hosted by Nottingham Forest. Kick-off is at 3pm on Saturday – as it should be – and as far as I can see the trains should be their usual selves. So leave early.




So Forest then. Their owner has been in the news of late having launched a libel suit against a fellow Greek club owner over allegations that he was involved in match-fixing, Russian sanctions busting and drug trafficking. One to keep an eye on for entertainment purposes, I’d say.

On the pitch they have been riding the wave of some decent form this season, though, with one notable exception, it’s fair to say that the fixture list has not been overly unkind to them so far. The season started off quietly, with a 1-1 draw at home to AFC Bournemouth being followed by an unspectacular, if predictable 1-0 win at Southampton. Equally unsurprising was a 1-1 home draw with Wolves.

However, the form book went out of the window when they went to Anfield finding the home team out of sorts enough to take away three points. Their five matches since then have seen them gain two wins (1-0 at home to Palace and 3-1 last weekend away at Leicester), two draws (2-2 at Brighton and 1-1 at Chelsea) and just the one defeat, a 1-0 reversal at home to Fulham.

All of which has seen them reach the giddy heights of seventh place with 16 points from the nine games played so far. This is five points and six places above us. There’s some interesting statistical stuff going on in there – they have lost just the once, but of their four wins only the one – the defeat of Palace – came at home. Look I thought it was interesting alright.

They have gained a reputation for going a bit bonkers in the transfer windows, such profligacy contributing to their four point deduction for breach of the profit and sustainability rules last term. Whilst they didn’t get anywhere near the 17 first teamers who arrived last season, this time around, they still managed to bring in eleven including two loan signings. This of course was highly annoying for Daisy who not only had to do the research, but also had the added burden of which ones should make the cut.

This means we can ignore Kiwi Marko Stamenic, who arrived for a reported £4m before being shipped out to Forest’s sister club Olympiakos for the season. And also David Camo who cost £10m from Porto only to be loaned back to Olympiakos where he had been on loan already from Porto. I don’t know if they have PSR in Greece but getting another club to buy your players for you would be a good way of avoiding it I guess.

This left Elliot Anderson as the first signing to make a contribution to the stats this term. Financially this was one of those completely above-board and not at all iffy deals that peppered the summer window before the end of June as clubs scrambled to beat deadlines for PSR purposes. In this case Newcastle booked a £35m fee into the accounts whilst actually receiving only £15m in cash, the balance arriving in the form of ‘keeper Odysseas Vlachodimos going in the opposite direction.

£12m went out to Florence to Fiorentina in return for the services of Nikola Milenkovic. The Serbian central defender made over 200 appearances for the Italians and has been an ever present in the league since coming in for the second match of the season at Southampton.

As did Jota Silva, a €7m purchase from Portuguese outfit Vitoria Guimares. The winger is a recent addition to the Portuguese international set-up and has a brace of caps having made his debut back in March, though he failed to make an appearance in the Euros.




They brought in another winger in the form of Paraguayan international Ramon Sosa. They paid out £9.3m to bring him in from Argentinian outfit Talleres. The deal was concluded after weeks of negotiations with Forest reportedly pulling out of an original deal to bring the player in for £15m.

The two loan signings both came from within the Premier League. James Ward-Prowse is of course a player with whom we are quite familiar. The loan rules mean he won’t be available for Saturday. Now say what you will of his overall contribution to the game in a claret and blue shirt but we do miss someone who can take corners.

Jarrod Bowen, bless him, for all his attributes can’t take a corner for toffee and has spent much of this season providing catching practice for opposition ‘keepers. The other loan signing was Villa’s Alex Moreno who operates principally down the left hand side.

On the injury side of things the aforementioned Anderson and Silva are joined by Morgan Gibbs-White and Chris Wood in facing late fitness tests for the weekend, though the prognosis seems to be that they are more likely to be fit than not, with Gibbs-White perhaps being a slightly bigger doubt than the others. They will be particularly keen to get Kiwi journeyman Wood out on to the pitch. To say they are reliant on him would be approaching understatement: they have scored 11 in the league this term and he has seven of them.

So on we move to the wild and wacky world of association football. And children’s charities probably missed a trick this week as a multitude of toys were thrown out of prams, largely at the behest of Real Madrid it has to be said, at the Ballon d’Or presentations in Paris this week.

Real were apparently upset that the award went to Rodri rather than Vinicius Jr and thus boycotted the event. This spurred a flurry of social media activity by the likes of Northampton Town and Dunstable both announcing their boycott of the event on the grounds that their own players had been similarly snubbed.

Meanwhile, the description of the event as “The Oscars Of Football” got me thinking. What such an event really needs is a decent host. I suggest Ricky Gervais might liven things up by resurrecting his Golden Globes schtick by laying into the assorted players and officials. You know the sort of thing – “look there’s Mo Salah. Well done Mo for making it all the way to your table without falling over”. “And there’s Mike Dean. Nice to see you Mike. Said nobody ever”. Ricky if they get in touch for the gig I’ll settle for 10% of the fee.

And on to us. Well that was very much the proverbial game of two halves last week. We stunk the place out in the first half, the only thing worse than our play being their finishing which prompted thoughts of “do they really want to get Ten Hag the sack?” Then at half time Lopetegui changed the team to something approaching that we had all expected in the first place.

The introduction of Summerville in particular paid dividends, the player showing more attacking invention in his first few minutes on the pitch than Paqueta had done in the whole of the first half. The goal when it came wasn’t entirely unexpected, though Ings really should have been the goalscorer. Let’s be kind and call his effort a “marvellous assist”.

We were the better side in the second half and it was notable that their equaliser came whilst we were down a player with Alvarez being on the sidelines having worn a piledriver. Which brings us on to the winner.




Now pundits a-plenty had a lot to say about it. None of whom thought it was a penalty though these are the same pundits who have nodded through most of Salah’s dives as “clear penalties”. So you have to ask yourself one question, that being “would anyone have batted an eyelid had that been given on the half way line” I suggest not.

Another thing that seemed to be missed by the collective blindness of the pundits that the De Ligt challenge was not the only foul in the box. If you look at the replay from the camera on the left hand side of the pitch as the ball comes over Max Kilman is having the shirt pulled off his back. Care to comment on that pundits? And the subsequent delaying tactics preventing the taking of the penalty resulted in exactly how many yellow cards being shown?

No matter what your thoughts on the decision there is some delicious irony in seeing a club that hasn’t won a trophy in its existence without help from match officials complaining about one going against them. It was like last season when Liverpool got one poor decision against them and we almost got questions in Parliament asked as a consequence. No matter that normal service was restored fairly quickly for the rest of the season.

Anyhow people have mentioned that Ten Hag was sacked thanks to us. I’d say he did a good enough job of that without needing our help if their performance was anything to go by.

It will be interesting to see if the team that starts at Forest bears any resemblance to that which started the second half on Sunday. I for one hope so. It seemed more balanced and those that came on seemed more involved than those they replaced.

There were no clues at the pre-match press conference but the one thing we do know is that neither Mohammed Kudus nor Niklas Fullkrug will be available, the former serving the second of his three-match ban for violent conduct, a crime which we now know does not include elbowing someone in the ribs (or is that just Van Dijk?) and the latter whose injury is due to heal up any year now.

So the prediction then. Well they are on a good run, but as mentioned earlier this has largely been based on not playing anyone good thus far. Only one win at home in all of that is an interesting stat – look it IS interesting ok? – and they do seem heavily reliant on one source for their goals.

Last weekend's second half for us will have given the players a boost and whilst all week I have been favouring the draw, now that I have come to commit my thoughts to paper I am going to be a bit more optimistic had previously been my plan. After all you laughed at my prediction last week - and look what happened.

So the £2 that I was going to send Vinicius Jr to buy himself a new rattle to replace that thrown out of his pram last week will instead be wagered with Mr Winstone on us to make it two in a row with a 2-1 win.

Enjoy The Game!




When last we met at the City Ground: (Premier League Feb 2024)

You know when they say a team “never turned up”? That was us in this one. We created pretty much nothing from start to finish, the players performance resembling one of those albums that artists put out to fulfil a contractual obligation (see under Van Morrison for the best/worst example of this). A goal in each half actually flattered us as Kalvin Phillips’ prior desecration of some Native American Burial Ground came back to haunt us as he picked up two yellows for otherwise innocuous challenges.

Danger Man: Chris Wood

Gets the majority of their goals and is precisely the type of journeyman striker that has traditionally thrived against us in the past.

Referee: Peter Bankes

Still owes us for donating Newcastle with two points in our home match against them last season as a result of two dreadful decisions that would have had him sectioned in most enlightened countries.

Percy and Daisy’s Nottingham Forest Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Nottingham Forest were the last actual “Club” in the English professional leagues, only becoming a Limited Company like every other club in 1982. Look I’LL decide what’s interesting around here ok?


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