Saturday already and into town sweep the once mighty Nottingham Forest. Sadly for our northern friends a large amount of coppicing and pollarding has occurred since their heydays and they now have returned to more or less what was always their raison d'être - to bounce around the second division.
And for once it's nice not to have to face a team with a new bloke in charge although, with 1 win in their last 9 league games, it is debatable whether current Forest incumbent - Philippe Montanier - will last much longer than the weekend if the tricky trees get cut down again.
Team news for Reading is that Rakels (ankle), Mendes (hamstring) and Jaakkola (?) are still out but Japp Stam should be able to perm what he likes from the remainder now that Gunter has returned from his 1 match ban.
Forest have a few injury problems on top of their poor current run with Jack Hobbs (remember him), David Vaughan, Daniel Pinillos, Michael Mancienne, Nicklas Bendtner, Mustapha Carayol and Matty Cash all missing the game.
Next up for scrutiny as the official is Hampshire's Andy "43 yellows and 2 reds so far" Davies
Previously with Mr Davies
06 Aug 2016 > Reading 1-0 Preston North End
15 Sep 2015 > Reading 0-1 Derby County
18 Jan 2014 > Reading 7-1 Bolton Wanderers
Today is the 37th league game between the two sides with all but 4 of the games happening at Division 2 level. There probably would have been more but for the regionalisation of divisions 3 and 4 prior to the late 50s which saw Forest usually - but not always - in the northern section. Consequently we played them regularly in the late 20s but, aside from a couple of seasons around 1950, managed to avoid them until 1997 came round and since then it's been one of the more regular of our fixtures.
It's all fairly even at home with a record of
Interestingly in every one of the 6 league games Forest have won in Reading, Reading have failed to score...
GTFI... 