Championship betting tip: Huddersfield Town- Nottingham Forest
Sep 25, 2020
Championship : Huddersfield Town- Nottingham Forest
This is an interesting game in that we have two teams who "over achieved" to some level last season. Town had pretty much bottom 4 numbers all through the campaign , yet finished 18th, albeit only 3 points above the drop zone . They sacked Danny Cowley as head coach at the end of the season, it was a bit of a shock and many supporters did not agree with the decision. I do not see any of the overriding issues as being down to him, the rot set in long before he and his brother arrived and all the Premier league money had disappeared or been wasted and the Cowley's remit was to further trim the wage bill and survive, which they did .But in March I wrote ..........
Huddersfield have basically been in a three year relegation battle and when everyone was getting carried away shortly after the Cowley brothers took charge I cautioned that ............ I have not seen any statistical improvement from Town under the Cowley brothers, maybe there was in terms of results for a brief run of games, but the underlying issues go so deep and they have been playing negatively and without success for so long, that it is a big hole for the Terriers to climb out of. I think the game plan has to be simply survive and go back to the drawing board in the summer and rethink the whole thing.
Well the owner did rethink and decided to swap Cowley for 37 yo Carlos Corberán as his replacement. The Spaniard has been working as first team coach and head of the U23's at Leeds United and is a Marcelo Bielsa disciple. El Loco has been very complimentary about his assistant and another club was always going to pick up on that. But as good as might be and it could be "very" not everyone is meant to be a #1 and turning around a club that has struggled for three years, has little confidence, or money and with a further remit to start playing attractive football , which they have not done for a very long time, is a tall order. They have lost all three games (one cup) under the new head coach without scoring and were beyond awful in the last , a 3-0 defeat at Lionel Road to Brentford last weekend where they created little and were flattered by the scoreline, with the Bees wasteful in front of goal .
Forest have also lost all three without scoring . They are the bigger club and were top six for almost all of last season, but had triple red type numbers for the whole of the campaign and I suppose rightly missed out on top six and the playoffs on the final day of the season by an incredible sequence of results and big goal difference swing. They have now lost five in a row and have not won in nine and today, we have two teams who cannot win !
Forest do have a little money to spend and also got circa £16m for Matty Cash who they sold to Villa, they have signed youngsters Loic Mbe Soh from PSG and Scott McKenna from Aberdeen and bought in eight experienced players in Fouad Bachirou (Malmo), Lyle Taylor (Charlton) , Jack Colback (Newcastle) , Tyler Blackett (Reading) , Miguel Angel Guerrero (Olympiakos), Luke Freeman (Sheffield United) , Cyrus Christie (Fulham) and Harry Arter (Bournemouth). Several have played in very good teams at this level, Arter has been promoted from the Championship twice for example, Taylor scored 11 goals pre lockdown in a poor Charlton side after which he sat out the games to wait for this move.
Forest also have a proven goalscorer in Lewis Grabban , he has 94 Championship goals ,including 20 last season and a top goalkeeper in Brice Samba who has the best distribution I have seen in the second tier. They have a lot of the pieces and a good tactician at the helm in Sabri Lamouchi (pictured) but one who was too negative last season when I wrote .............
Nottingham Forest are 5th and look good for the playoffs, but all stats indicate they are not of that level, neither are they a team I want to watch very often, as head coach Sabri Lamouchi is way too negative for my liking and is of the one goal is plenty philosophy and very much of a reactive rather than proactive mindset. They are a team very happy at 0-0 and it is only when they fall behind that we see full use of their expensively assembled squad, or late in the game when they might take a few more chances. I do not think this is how football should be played and whilst it was initially successful for Huddersfield and Middlesbrough two teams who set up similarly prior to promotion, it has ended, if not in tears, then with both having eventually gone backwards in terms of league position and finances. It is just not the way to thrive in modern football.
Having said that, and this is what makes it all the more frustrating, Lamouchi is tactically astute and makes good adjustments, albeit only when "needed", his team are ranked #23 for the first half of home games , but they are #1 and unbeaten after it, with a 8-10-0 record and league high 34 points, in all games played home and away Forest have lost just one of 37 second halves, but will too often settle for a point when three might well be up for grabs.
Hopefully when all the incoming players have gelled we will see Forest play a more expansive game.
I think these notes will serve us well this season which is why I have spent so long on them. My thinking right now is that Corberán has a lot of work to do and that Forest have enough talent to be competitive but just have to be braver in games and take more chances. They have had over 3.30 xG across those two league starts so maybe they just need a little luck.
1.75 units Nottingham Forest -0.5 ball 2.53 asian line/Sportmarket .
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