The end to a sad week following the passing of both Nigel Doughty and Jim King, I know that I am not the only person looking forward to this match as an opportunity to pay our respects and hopefully start the healing process, both on and off the pitch.

Forest are of course on a bad run. Really bad. I don’t think we would mind the defeats so much if we had even looked like scoring a goal, but our forwards currently remind me of a teenage boy trying to unhook a bra for the first time. Watford are looking for their third win on the trot, but have an abject away record.

The good news for Forest is that we finally have a decent number of defenders to call upon; while young full-backs Cunningham and Moloney are missing, we have four more defenders than last-time to choose from, in the returning Luke Chambers, and new boys Danny Higginbotham, Scott Wootton and George Elokobi. I would certainly expect to see the experienced Higginbotham and Elokobi to start, and I owe the Wolves defender an apology after suggesting that his photo on the Forest website made him look a bit lardy – make up your own mind:

However, I stand by my assertion that if Reidy and Big George were both on the bench, it would probably break.

Watford have Stephen McGinn and man-mountain Martin Taylor missing, and may well have former Reds mardy-striker (and I genuinely mean that as a compliment) Joe Garner in their starting line-up.

Let’s just hope that Forest can score a goal – as Steve Cotterill suggested before the ill-fated Burnley match, getting the first goal could make all the difference to a team who are low on confidence (and may well damage the confidence of a Watford team not used to winning away). Perhaps we could place faith in the other Wolves loanee Adlene Guedioura who, as well as being too orangey for crows, managed more shots on goal in one match against Burnley than most of our team have all season.

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