Match Preview: Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa

Who are we playing?
Nottingham Forest, Saturday 1st August at 3.00pm

Where are we playing?
Nottingham Forest Football Club
The City Ground
Nottingham
NG2 5FJ

Can I go?
On general sale, £15 plus booking fee.



Easy to get to?

the local plod

Walking distance from Nottingham Railway Station (about a mile). The local plod are advising using the Meadow Club which is the Notts County Supporters Club if you fancy a beer or six.

Can I watch it on telly?
Live on AVTV HD if it's working (they seem to have sorted the glitches), but you'd rather be there, surely...

Big game?
The last chance for Timbo to test his players before it all gets serious at Bournemouth.

With so many leaving and the new faces starting to appear, it's been a tricky pre-season to judge so far and the real fear about these warm up games is that we pick up injuries.

There were heart stopping moments at Molineux with Micah Richards, Leandro Bacuna and Gabby Agbonlahor all going down heavily.

We'd imagine we'll see more of Gueye and Amavi as they continue to acclimatise to football in the UK.

The result isn't important, but we don't fancy the twenty minute trudge back to the train station if we've lost.

Typical Forest Fan

Do Forest have any famous fans?
Well there's Su Pollard off of Hi-di-Hi and Christopher Dean off of the skating.

We've got fiddle playing scruffbox Nigel Kennedy off of Radio 3.

So we win.



Who's playing for us?

Libby was on fire at Wolves

Gawd knows. The normally media friendly Tim Sherwood isn't indulging the media with post match pressers, so little info is leaking out.

We reckon Tim will go with a pretty similar team to the Walsall and wolves ones, injuries not withstanding. Gabby's injury may well mean that he gives Jordan Ayew a start, or he may choose to plump for Callum Robinson who hasn't looked at all out of place in a first team line up.

Who's playing for them?
Expect to see the likes of Daniel Pinillos.

Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:

• There have been 122 competitive meetings between the clubs. We've won 57, drawn 28 and lost 37.

Howard Vaughton

• We've not played a competitive match against Forest this century. The last meeting was at Villa park in April 1999. We won 2-0 thanks to goals from Mark Draper and young Gareth Barry

• We played a pre-season friendly at their place three years ago. We lost 3-1 with Barry Bannan scoring ours. Lewis McGugan got two of theirs.

• Villa's first meeting with Forest was a FA Cup tie in 1980, Villa winning the  2-0 thanks to goals from Howard Vaughton and Archie Hunter.

Prediction
Forest should be up for this but we should emerge victorious. Going for a 3-1 Villa win.