West Brom v Forest Match Preview

Forest will be putting their proud away unbeaten run (now stands at 10 months) on the line on Friday as they face early season pace setters West Brom in a top of the table clash. With West Brom sitting just 2 points ahead of Forest this could see the reds move into an automatic promotion place.

This is a serious game, snow joke.

Sorry

Ishmael Miller has made his comeback from injury in a reserve game & may make the bench in this game, James Morrison is still out with an injury to his heel & Neil Clement is out with a knee problem (now retired), there are no other injury concerns for the Baggies but Abdoulaye Meite is away with the Ivory Coast squad at the African Cup Of Nations

The midfielder has been at the centre of everything for West Brom this season & has contributed 5 goals & 9 assists in his 20 starts.

There are no new injury worries for Forest but Billy Davies may well shuffle his pack again as Nicky Shorey is available again after not being allowed to play in the Cup by his parent Club.

Davies may revert to his 4-5-1 formation for this away fixture which will mean Blackstock would have a very heavy workload but like the Newcastle fixture earlier in the season, he has shown himself to be more than adequate in that role.

West Brom have had much the better of this fixture over the years with 51 wins out of the 113 league encounters between the two teams, forest have managed just 39 wins with 23 games drawn, the scoring stats are similar with West Brom grabbing 196 of the 325 goals this fixture has produced.

Interestingly, in 5 attempts so far this season, West Brom have failed to beat any of the top 10 teams at home (lost three v Cardiff, Swansea & Palace & drawn two v QPR & Newcastle) while Forest are unbeaten away all season & in 5 games against the top 10 teams Forest have drawn 4 & won the other.

The Forest defence has now gone 480 minutes of league football without conceding a goal.

Scoring:
West Brom average a goal scored every 43 minutes & concede every 94 minutes.

Forest Score a goal every 63 minutes but on average only concede every 120 minutes.

Lee Probert of Wiltshire will take charge of this fixture, he's had more than his fair share of controversy in his time as a ref but has been kind to Forest whenever he has taken charge of a game for us with him being in charge of the 0 - 3 away win in last seasons FA Cup win over Manchester City as well as taking charge of the recent 1 - 1 draw with Middlesbrough earlier this season. He will be assisted by Andy Newbold of Leicestershire and Graham Stott of Oxfordshire. Fourth Official Tony Bates of Staffordshire

This has all the makings of a 1 - 1 draw but with Forest being in such fine defensive & away form I'm going to go for another clean sheet & a 0 - 1 Forest win.

Tuesday, 12 January 19:45
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