Nottingham Forest vs Brentford Bet Builder Tips, Stats, Best Bets, Predictions

Two sides who probably have more questions than answers going into the new campaign meet on Sunday afternoon when Nottingham Forest host Brentford at the City Ground.

You would imagine on the opening day that this would be quite a tense and tight affair. Nottingham Forest are still active in the transfer market which suggests that they aren’t completely happy with their options, while Brentford have seen the spine of their side disintegrate in the summer.

The fact that Forest are targeting deals for attackers tells us that they could be a work in progress going forward initially too, but we know their defensive acumen.

Keith Andrews has confirmed that Yoane Wissa won’t play this match and Bryan Mbuemo has moved on so the Bees also look like they are going to be light in key attacking areas.

Both meetings last season went under 2.5. Forest have played seven friendlies in pre-season and scored a total of one goal while Brentford have only played three warm-up matches.

Both teams look undercooked up top so the under looks solid here.

It is a little hard to know how Brentford are going to set up in attack but we know it will be a bit of a change because of the loss of Mbuemo and the absence of Wissa.

In the pre-season games, Keith Andrews was setting up with Mikkel Damsgaard behind Thiago Rodriguez in forward positions so we should probably expect the Dane to be much more prominent in the attacking play this term.

We know that Wissa isn’t playing here so Brentford will look to Damsgaard to pull the trigger whenever possible and when you consider that there isn’t likely to be much joy from crossing opportunities, the ball should make its way to the attacker regularly enough.

Damsgaard averaged 1.08 shots per 90 in the Premier League for the Bees last term and with a more prominent role it makes sense to expect him to fire another effort over the course of this contest.

There will be a lot of scrutiny on Morgan Gibbs-White this term, particularly in the early part of it after he signed a new deal in the summer despite plenty of interest from elsewhere.

He will probably feel that he has to justify that contract and getting his side off to a positive start would certainly help with that.

The Forest attack does look like a work in progress at the minute though with late deals being concluded for players, who even if they have signed in time for this match you wouldn’t expect to start given the lack of preparation.

That means that they are going to need a strong performance out of Gibbs-White. The playmaker will want a huge season with this being a World Cup year and is likely to play a little further forward here given the current rebuild of the Forest attack so him to hit the target over the course of the 90 minutes makes sense.

We’ll conclude the bet builder with over 3.5 cards in a match where we expect Peter Bankes to be an extremely busy man in his first Premier League outing of the season.

These two met twice in the Premier League last term and they combined for 15 cards in total, eight in one match and seven in the other, so when they come up against each other it seems to get quite feisty.

You wouldn’t think anything will have changed on the Forest front with that, they might even double down on their aggressiveness with a point to prove to some, while Brentford certainly have the bit between their teeth to show that they won’t be pushovers under Andrews this season.

Only four teams picked up more yellow cards than Forest last season while Brentford have a couple of players who are well-known to the notebook of the referee in Keane Lewis-Potter and Nathan Collins.

Expect the card to be out a few times here, especially with referees always keen to lay the law down at the start of a season.