Sports Blog 11/04/2016: Championship Preview – Nottingham Forest vs Brighton, Monday 11th April 2016

Lurking at the outskirts of an automatic promotion, can Brighton continue to put the pressure on Burnley and Middlesbrough with a win at Nottingham Forest at 7.45pm on Sky Sports 1?

The Seagulls will likely be a bit frustrated with their form since the start of March. Consecutive goalless draws against Preston and Sheffield Wednesday were followed by victories against Reading and MK Dons, only for Brighton to once again drop points against league leaders Burnley, a 93rd minute equaliser from Michael Keane denying Chris Hughton’s men all 3 points.

Things did admittedly pick up again last weekend, a 2-1 win over Birmingham keeping Brighton in contention for one of those automatic promotion sports, in 3rd place with 75 points and a game in hand over Burnley (if not over Boro). Yet those 6 dropped points in the last month and a bit (not to mention their disastrous would have seen the Seagulls top of the Championship, and Houghton will be eager to prevent any more slip-ups if the club isn’t to regret how things panned out come the end of the season.



Though if we are talking about regret Nottingham Forest have Brighton beat by a long way already. After a middling-to-miserable start to the season things had begun to pick up for Forest, unbeaten between the end of November and the start of February; yet since the things had deteriorated at an alarming rate, the club losing 8 of their last 10 Championship matches. That run saw the dismissal of Dougie Freeman, replaced by caretaker manager Paul Williams, though it made little difference, an admirable 1-1 draw against Hull followed by 3 consecutive defeats.

Forest are just lucky that there have been teams in the league performing far worse; despite being stuck in 20th (with a game in hand) the storied Nottingham club have a 10 9 point gap over MK Dons in 22nd, a 10 point gap over 23rd place Charlton and a whopping 20 ahead of the already-relegated Bolton in last place. They do, however, have the 2nd worst strike force in the Championship, managed a paltry 35 goals in 40 games (only MK Dons are more miserly upfront, scoring only 34).

Interestingly there are only 4 goals separating Brighton’s top scorer Tomar Hemed’s 13 goals (heading into Monday night at a Super Mega PGM of 27-32) and the 9 nabbed by Forest’s leading forward Nelson Oliveira. Sadly for Forest, however, Oliveira is out for the rest of the season, leaving Matt Mills, a defender, as their top scorer with a meagre 5 goals (and a predictably low Super Mega PGM of 3-6).

Given how dire the home side have been of late it comes as no surprise that our Spreadex traders fancy an away win, offering a Brighton/Nottingham Forest Goal Supremacy spread of 0.35-0.55 with a Total Goals spread of 2.15-2.35.

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