A Short Step Over The Trent

Nottingham Forest continue their pre-season with a fixture against local rivals Notts County on Saturday the 25th & will come up against several recognisable faces in a game that some may think shows a slight resemblance to a Forest masters team, Forest old boys John Thompson, Ben Fairclough & Craig Westcarr are already on the County books & noises have been made about bringing in Forest's old league one strike force of Lester & Holt. As well as having Forest old boys on the playing staff they are currently managed by Charlie (Ian) McParland who spent several season at the City Ground as a Coach.

These two clubs have brought in 17 professional footballers to Nottingham so far, the local BMW 4x4 delearship must be rubbing their hands together.

County have been almost as busy in the transfer market as Forest this season bringing in no fewer than 8 players so far, Lee Hughes is the latest to arrive on the other side of the Trent after being released by Oldham & he joins Craig Westcarr and Luke Rodgers who bolster the Notts attack. Ben Davies has joined Ricky Ravenhill & Neal Bishop in a new look midfield who have all joined the Notts revolution this season while their defence has also been strengthened with the addition of Graeme Lee & our very own Brendan Moloney (loan).

Some Arabs & A Sweed have taken over at Meadow Lane, but so far we've failed to see any reports on this.

Probably the most impressive signing so far is midfielder Ben Davies from Shrewsbury who bagged 13 goals & 10 assists last season. He made a massive impact on Shrewsbury's promotion push last season which ended in the play off final.

Forest have brought in 9 players themselves this season in the form of Lee Camp (GK), Chris Gunter & Joel Lynch (defence), Paul McKenna, Radoslaw Majewski & Paul Anderson (midfield) & Dele Adebola, David McGoldrick & Dexter Blackstock (forwards).

After struggling last season to just survive in the Championship, this massive overhaul in players has seen many Forest fans turn their attentions towards a promotion push & the reported £6,000,000 spent so far has only strengthened their belief. Billy Davies is not the type to sit on his laurels either so the fans may well get their wish.

This will be most Forest fans 1st chance to see Majewski, who arrived from Polish football and comes with quite a reputation as both a quality footballer and all round bad boy, the fact he scored within 93 seconds of his club debut will only add to the anticipation.

This will be the 3rd consecutive season this game has been used as a pre-season warm up at Meadow Lane with Forest winning both games by the odd goal 1 - 2 & 2 - 3 respectively

Forest pre-season fixture list comes to an end in the next week with home games against Stoke City (Wednesday 29th July 7:45pm) and Birmingham City (Saturday 1st August 3:00pm)

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