Derby Destruction For Nottingham Forest

A fixture that always stirs emotions in the Midlands with Derby County looking to move to the top of the Championship table.

Form
Last weekend’s narrow 1-0 win over Ipswich was a huge victory for the Rams and now sees them level at the top of the Championship table alongside Bournemouth on 48 points. Previous wins against Birmingham, Leeds and Southport make it four victories on the bounce and Steve McClaren’s men have now gone more than six hours of football without conceding a goal.

Chris Martin scored the only goal of the game last Saturday and in doing so moved on to 18 goals for the season, midfielder Jonny Russell is the club’s second top scorer with eight.

Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, are dropping down the table like a stone and last weekend’s 2-0 loss at home to Sheffield Wednesday made it four defeats in a row and eight without a win. Having begun the season unbeaten in their first 10 league and cup games their recent form figures now read as just two wins in 20. Another loss this weekend could spell the end for under-fire manager Stuart Pearce.

Top scorer Britt Assombalonga, who began the season with eight goals in seven league games, now has only one in his last five. While Forest as a team have managed to score just two goals in their last six in all competitions and haven’t scored more than once in a game in any of their last eight.

Team News
Former Chelsea youth-team defender Isak Ssewankambo has joined Derby from NAC Breda and could go straight into the match day squad, but John Eustace will be unavailable following the red card that he received in the dying minutes of last Saturday’s game.

Gary Gardner could make his first start for Forest after he joined the club on loan from Aston Villa last week and was introduced from the substitute’s bench at the weekend.

Head-to-Head
The two sides played out a 1-1 draw when they met at the City Ground earlier this season with Assombalonga putting the hosts ahead before Ryan Shotton equalised with 10 minutes to go and Jake Buxton was sent off in the dying embers of the game.

This game last season finished 5-0 to the Rams with Craig Bryson scoring a hat-trick and Jonny Russell and Jeff Hendrick completing the rout.

Recommended Bets
With Stuart Pearce’s job on the line, Forest in dreadful form and The Rams looking like potential title winners this could well be a rout for the home team. The Match Odds market has Derby priced at odds of 8/11 and that looks to be a very fair price.

If you want to squeeze a bit more from backing a Derby win then the 19/10 about the hosts winning without conceding a goal – as they have done in their previous four fixtures – looks to be a good bet, as does the 5/1 available on Derby to win with a -2.0 handicap.