Thursday 8 September 2016

Match Preview: Villa v Forest

by Dek Hogan

Who are we playing? 
Nottingham Forest on Sunday 11th September at 1.15pm

Where are we playing?
Villa Park, you know where it is.
.
Can I go? Should be tickets available but loads of people are up for this one. Should be another large gate despite the telly.

Easy to get to?
We all know how shite the trains can be on Sunday. The roads should be OK though.

Can I watch it on telly
Sky Sports provide live coverage but surely you'd rather be there? If you can, get your behind down Villa Park and make some noise because the Forest support will be.


Big game?
HUGE.

Time to get some points on the board and no mistake.

The utter debacle that was the second half at Bristol City is probably best forgotten. The international break and the excitement of the transfer window slamming shut will have helped in that regard.

Unfortunately, sections of our home support have a history at getting on new players backs from the get-go if they turn about to be as good as Messi in the first few minutes of their debuts.

Two things to say about that:

1. For fuck's sake, give the newbies as chance. Some have already written Jedinak off after his poor showing at Ashton Gate. This is NUTS. He wasn't great but IT TAKES TIME TO SETTLE IN. Put your brain into gear before shouting your mouth off and give the newbies a fucking chance.

2. This is just the start of the rebuild. Don't throw your hands up in despair if things don't go totally our way. We are a the beginning of may well be a rollercoaster journey.

All that said, if we are to be consider amongst the promotion hopefuls, we need to start winning matches and two home wins in quick succession would propel us dramatically up the table.

Two home defeats and the harbingers of doom (there's fucking loads of them on Twitter) will be writing the club's obituary yet again.

Forest's three wins have all come at home. They'll compete but we should have enough IF we take our chances.


Do Nottingham Forest boast any famous fans?
There's Carl Froch off of the boxing.

We've got the bloke that writes the Jack Reacher books. (Tiny Tom Cruise playing Jack in the movies. What were they thinking?)

So we win.

Who's playing for us?
We've just got to hope that everyone came back from international duty unscathed. Jack was sent home from England U21 duty with a sore knee for example.

The new lads will be pressing for a start.

Who's playing for them?
Britt Assombalonga is facing a battle to recover from his hamstring problem. Apostolos Vellios is likely to lead the line

Any useless stats?
Of course, here you go:
  • We last faced Forest in 1999 in the Premier League. we won 2-0 at Villa Park thanks to goals from Mark Draper and Gareth Barry.
  • We have 57 wins over them while they've beaten us on 37 occasions. There have been 28 draws.
  • The last time we faced Nottingham in the second tier of English football was in March 1975 at the City Ground. We won 3-2 with Ray Graydon netting twice and Brian Little getting on the scoresheet. The game just a week after Villa's triumph over Norwich in the League Cup Final.
Prediction
A 3-1 Villa win.
 
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