Key events
15 min In Larnaca, Ismaila Sarr has given Palace the lead – 1-0 on the night, 1-0 on aggregate.
13 min Brumado finds space in centrefield and slides a pass i behind for Osorio and for a second it looks like he’s away, but Morato does well to get back at him and make the challenge.
11 min Hutchinson finds McAtee, who lays back for Bakwa, but the pitch is a lively one and his first touch runs away from him, Castillo making the challenge before buying a free-kick.
10 min The ball comes in and the ref appraises a foul, so awards Forest a free-kick.
9 min Midtjylland are having more possession now, looking to get at Forest by passing forward quickly and getting me into the box. They find Osorio down the right, he draws Dominguez in, sticks the ball behind, and his cross is blocked, going out for a corner.
6 min “Many moons ago I went paintballing with some friends,” brags Hassan, |and in the midst of a particularly ferocious round, the hostilities were interrupted by some poor sod who got (under)paid to sprint across the battle lines in an orange spandex suit, thereby drawing flak from both sides. By wading into the ‘Europa v Premier League’ debate and nonchalantly throwing in a remark about shafting Palace just for good measure, I can’t help thinking you’re tempting a similar fate with the Forest fanbase.”
I’ve only been painballing once – it was on the stag of a uni mate who ended up in the police, so his work crew were pinging shots off hands and so on – sore as you like. It turned out the best way to combat this was not let on they’d hit, which of course wet down very well.
My guess, though, is that most Forest fans don’t like this XI, and it was the suits who shafted Palace, not the support.
4 min This has been a fair start from Forest, Lucca unfairly penalised for handball after leaping to impart a touch with the top of his shoulder. He’s been really poor since joining from Napoli on loan, but a decent performance tonight would make him worth whatever he’s cost.
3 min Now it’s Yates with a ball down the line for Ndoye, but his cross picks out the keeper, who claims under nae pressure.
2 min Midtjylland try and press high as Forest move the ball across the back four; they want a quick start and a quick game, but a channel-ball finds Hutchinson down the left and lays back for Bakwa, who leathers a shot from a tightish angle just over the bar.
1 min Away we go!
Midtjylland, meantime, will want to overload Forest in central areas, with the two centre-backs asked to mark three men; I’m also expecting long balls and quick transitions.
Here come our teams…
Where is the game? Midtjylland will probably go man to man all over the pitch, leaving them vulnerable if ever they lose a duel. So Forest will want to be proactive in the tackle but also look to run at their opponents, because as soon as one is beaten, everything opens up.
Otherwise, they’ll hope to double up oin wide areas, getting behind the wing-back and outside centre-backs, while Omari Hutchinson is their wildcard, able to commit defenders and invent situations.
Also playing tonight: Crystal Palace visit Larnaca in the Conference League, 0-0 from the first leg.
Have Spurs found something just in time?
If they can get Tel and Xavi Simons going, that might be enough to save them.
Goodness me, what a combination of words are this headline. Things; the absolute state of.
Forest fans: what team would you have picked tonight?
“I did what I must do,” Vitor Pereira tells TNT, adding that he thinks he’s picked a team good enough to do the job. It’s crucial the club stay in the Premier League and he’s got options on the bench if things aren’t going well. They need to be compact and play with quality when they have the ball.
I feel their pain, but I’m not sure what Caf were meant to do. If stomping off the pitch is in the ambit of permitted responses to a poor decision, the game has big problems.
“World not needing this,” says David Dein, paraphrasing me back to myself. “Perhaps, but it’s still worth remembering that Forest and their owners decided the Europa League was worth shafting Palace for, and now they deprioritise it. I would suggest that what the football world needs is much less of people like that.”
I couldn’t agree more, and not just the football world.
What on earth is going on with Manchester City?
Question: what is the exact thing the Premier League – and wider world of football – does not need?
Answer: this.
Thinking back to when my own team were good, I quite liked it when they went behind or if teams came back, because those games were much more of a buzz than the litany of comfortable wins.
In the studio, Peter Crouch is unchuffed with Forest’s line-up saying as a player, you want to play in all the big games, whereas Reid is more understanding. So, tangentially, a question: as a player, is a relegation struggle more enjoyable than mid-table mediocrity because at least there’s some excitement about it?
Midtjylland make two changes to the side which played last week: in come Andreasen and Osorio, with Mbabu dropping out completely and Simsir on the bench.
Andy Reid is a pretty good pundit, but his taste in what I believe are called overshirts leaves something to be desired.
I can’t help but note that McAtee and Lucca were both hooked at half-time when Fenerbahce visited Nottingham; both start tonight. I guess it’s possible Forest use the first half to stay in the game, then send on their better players to try and steal a result, but given they went close to full-strength in the home leg, it feels like the 1-0 defeat has persuaded them to abandon their hopes of winning this competition.
So, Mats Sels, Ola Aina, Neco Williams, Murillo, Morgan Gibbs-White, Elliot Anderson, and Igor Jesus are all left on the bench with Spurs on Sunday in mind; Stefan Ortega, Morato, Dan Ndoye, Lorenzo Lucca, Omari Hutchinson, Ryan Yates, James McAtee, Dilane Bakwa and Zach Abbott come into the XI. I don’t know, do we not think progress and a good performance would help them at the weekend? Pah, etc.
Er, it appears Vitor Pereira, Evengelos Marinakis or both disagree with me: they want Forest to stay up for the potential glory of a finish between eighth and 17th next season, much, much more than they want the unfathomable joy of bringing a European trophy back to the City Ground. Whatever turns you on, lads.
Teams!
Midtjylland (3-4-1-2): Olafsson; Bech, Erlic, Diao; Jensen, Billing, Bravo, Castillo; Bak, Byskov, Castillo; Andreasen; Osorio, Brumado. Subs: Lossl, Ugboh, Lee, Gabriel, Ze, Cho, Gogorza, Chilufya, Uhre, Emefile, Simsir.
Nottingham Forest (4-4-1-1): Ortega; Dominguez, Abbott, Milenkovic, Morato; Ndoye, Yates, McAtee, Bakwa; Hutchinson, Lucca. Subs: Sels, Willows, Williams, Murillo, Sangare, Anderson, Gibbs-White, Igor Jesus, Aina, Whitehall, Sinclair, Hanks.
Referee: Felix Zwayer (Germany)
Preamble
Fourth-bottom of the Premier League and clear of the relegation zone on goal difference only, with a Sunday match against the side a point and a place ahead to come; a midweek schlep to Denmark is surely the last thing Nottingham Forest need.
Yeah, [redacted] that. A midweek schlep to Denmark is exactly what Nottingham Forest need, a chance for the players to make themselves immortal and for younger fans raised on tales of triumphs past to enjoy an eternal moment that is truly theirs. In simple terms, one Europa League is worth a million relegations.
And make no mistake, Forest are capable of lifting this trophy, despite the deficit they must retrieve this evening. Though they find goals difficult to come by, they are solid at the back and superb in midfield, which makes them a nasty proposition in any cup competition and, in Midtjylland, they face opponents who are competent but not devastating, their one-goal advantage not close to definitive. Or, put another way, for the Forest players and fans, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.
Kick-off: 6.45pm local, 5.45pm GMT
