English Npower Championship Preview: Week 6
Tension is building behind the scenes at Nottingham Forest and the mood of manager Billy Davies could be set to take a significant turn for the worse when he travels to face his former club Preston on Tuesday.
Davies has spent most of the past eight months locked in a political battle with his board of directors and the situation is beginning to have a negative effect on performances, so we'll happily take odds of 7/4 about North End making the most of home advantage in this encounter. His frustration is understandable and though he remains adamant that he won't walk away from the job, he now appears to be backing chairman Nigel Doughty into a corner whereby a couple of bad results might produce a tipping point, bringing the matter to a head once and for all. As it is, Forest haven't tasted defeat since the opening day at Burnley but a subsequent string of 1-1 draws have failed to mask the drop in standard from the start of last season when the Reds were in the hunt for automatic promotion. Now it seems only a matter of time before they are punished more severely for their instability. Punters who witnessed Preston's alarming collapse at Burnley on Saturday evening might be inclined to give them a wide berth but we much prefer to focus our attention on all the good things they did in the opening 84 minutes at Turf Moor. Four defeats in five matches hardly constitutes an ideal start for Darren Ferguson but performances appear to be steadily improving and the Lancashire club could be ready to climb the table in the coming weeks. The Lilywhites have long boasted an incredible winning culture at Deepdale having won a staggering 54 per cent of their home fixtures over the past 12 seasons and the price becomes simply irresistible when you combine this history with Forest's 15-match winless sequence away from the City Ground. Meanwhile, Bristol City got their season up and running with victory over Scunthorpe on Saturday but their new-found optimism could prove to be short-lived when unfashionable Watford rock up at Ashton Gate. The Robins will no doubt be looking to use the result at Glanford Park as a springboard to get over being jilted by Steve Coppell, but we simply cannot look too far beyond the obvious advantage gained by facing Scunny while Nigel Adkins' future was up in the air. Watford haven't won since catching Norwich cold in the Championship curtain-raiser on August 6 but we see many similarities with that game here and this looks like the ideal setting for Malky Mackay's young troops to reap full reward for their positive approach. The Hornets aren't short of firepower and odds of 7/4 on the draw-no-bet market trump the 11/4 on the win-draw-win, so that's how we'll stake our claim in this one.
Last week, the belligerent Glaswegian described himself as "shell-shocked and stunned" by the failure of the club's 'acquisitions committee' to land any of his requested transfer targets for the second successive transfer window.
