Forest Boffin

Forest opened the 2021-22 season on Sunday, victims of a fairytale homecoming for The Sky Blues, playing in Coventry for the first time in two years. Chris Hughton had a number of selection problems, with players missing from his threadbare senior squad due to injury and coronavirus isolation. Lyle Taylor spearheaded a 4-2-3-1 system, with Alex Mighten and Brennan Johnson starting in attack along with Joe Lolley. Jack Colback and Ryan Yates played disciplined roles in front of an unfamiliar looking defence. Mark Robins used the 3-4-1-2 trend that featured heavily in The Championship last season – Martyn Waghorn is a notable summer arrival at Coventry, but the danger-man in this side is attacking midfielder Callum O’Hare. Coventry started the game playing patient football, looking after the ball in their defence and midfield – they dominated possession throughout the match, seeing 67% of the ball. This might be expected for a home team losing for much of the game, but even before conc...

Ryan Yates is another of those players who splits opinion, attracting a wide variety of criticism. Which grumbles are justified? Which are myths? And can he fit into a successful midfield? 1.   Forest’ s results are poorer when Ryan  Yates  plays . Forest are struggling, however the alleged drop in performance with Yates in the side simply has not happened this season. Yates has played for 45 minutes or more in 18 league games, yielding 19 points - an average of 1.06 points per game. He has failed to feature for 45 minutes in 5 games, which returned 3 points – an average of 0.6 points per game. I would not say the improved tally is due to Yates – in fact this statistic is kind to him; Forest lost a game which he started but was sent off, contributing to that defeat. However, even if we artificially alter the statistics to take this game into account, Forest still earned more points with him in the side and therefore this claim is clearly a myth. 2. Ryan Yates cannot tackl...

Chris Hughton’s first seven games at Forest have seen an impressive turnaround in results – the new manager has accrued 12 points, compared with 1 point gained in the club's previous seven games. However, we can see that he is still evolving his system, which suggests even more improvement could be imminent. It should be pointed out that the previous points tally is a false figure; aside from last season’s games against Barnsley, and the Stoke calamity, Forest were not as poor as 1 points out of 21 suggests. This season at least, Sabri Lamouchi had the team doing broadly what he wanted – aside from player error at crucial times, they were mainly solid and the trademark fluid movement was there. But poor finishing, opposition goalkeeping heroics and the loss of key players cranked up the pressure and asked Lamouchi questions to which he didn’t have the answer. With Forest flailing around towards the bottom of The Championship, the new manager’s answer was a tried and tested one; ...

Chris Hughton began his Nottingham Forest career with a win against in-form Blackburn Rovers. Both teams will look very different in the coming weeks; less than ideal preparations on both sides led to a drab, scrappy encounter from which Forest barely scraped a welcome victory. Hughton named a familiar looking side in a 4-2-3-1 system using a soft press, setting up to sit back and get the basics right with the emphasis on defence. Ryan Yates earned a deserved recall. Tony Mowbray deployed Blackburn in his 4-3-3 system, complaining that the team was ‘thrown together’; they were without three or four of this season’s top performers as well as any of their recent loan additions. With Bradly Dack still recovering from a cruciate ligament injury, on paper this was as poor a Rovers side as any team will face this season. The match was dictated by the two team’s different pressing games. As Forest concentrated on defence, they were very conservative in this regard, ceding possession and o...

Forest are yet to register a point this season after a 2-0 defeat to Cardiff City at the weekend. In a classic game of two halves The Reds once again struggled against a big target man. Sabri Lamouchi changed his system to successfully deal with the problem, but it was not enough to change the result. Both teams lined up in a 4-2-3-1. It is impossible to say what Forest’s game-plan was, because within four minutes Cardiff had implemented theirs and were a goal up. The Bluebirds were spearheaded by 6 foot 4 target-man Kieffer Moore, who would shortly do the damage during two poorly defended set-plays. As well as his goalscoring prowess, his presence – and how Forest dealt with him – was the main tactical issue during open play. Cardiff were completely geared towards playing long balls to Moore. Passing around the defence and midfield occurred mainly as a prelude to frequent, direct passes to their striker – the long pass which led to their successful corner in the second minute was ...

Football has been overshadowed this year by the tragedy of Covid-19. As we try to regain some normality and finish the 2019-20 season, I'll be looking at a series of factors which may influence the conclusion of the Championship season. Next is the possibility of extra substitutions being available. In order to protect player welfare, FIFA have made a temporary amendment in the laws covering substitutions: A team can now make a maximum of five substitutions per game, instead of three. If a game enters extra time (not time added on), a sixth substitution may be made. Each team will have a maximum of three opportunities to make their five changes - in addition to half-time. These changes are discretionary and must be ratified by the individual competition organisers, in the case of The Championship the EFL – unsurprisingly the EFL have not made a statement regards whether this change has been implemented (unless I’ve missed it – I’ve looked hard). A decision on thi...

Football has been overshadowed this year by the tragedy of Covid-19. As we try to regain some normality and finish the 2019-20 season, I'll be looking at a series of factors which may influence the conclusion of the Championship season. First, a theory on the home team advantage. It is well established that home teams in football have a clear advantage. This season for example, home teams in The Championship have won on 42.6% of occasions. However much of this boost is due to fan encouragement – as we all know by now, the resumption of football will be behind closed doors which should logically go a long way towards neutralising this advantage. Football has already resumed in parts of Europe, and my analysis of the results so far has been surprising. Not only does the home advantage appear to have faded after the re-start, but in fact we have the first indications that away teams may in fact have a significant advantage. Albeit the sample data is relatively small - 127 games ...