Simon Dalton presents his prediction bet for the friendly matches.
Nottingham Forest continue their pre-season preparations with a friendly against Sunderland in Spain. Despite not showing high performance last season Forest stayed in the Premier League. Although some financial troubles resulted in the team suffering a 4-points deduction last season, Nottingham managed to keep the bulk of their squad together. And even added a promising midfielder Elliot Anderson from Newcastle. His scoring stats are not that impressive (2 assists last season). But he played 21 matches in the Premier League and 2 games in the Champions League. His experience will definitely help the team to strengthen the midfield.
Head coach Nuno Espirito Santo said: «The squad is not complete yet, we still have to make decisions. More importantly, we were able to keep our players».
The recent games prove that Nuno is right. His squad just defeated Chesterfield 3-0. In general, they won 3 of their last 5 matches. While Sunderland have only 1 victory under their belt in the previous 5 encounters. Finishing last season in the Championship in 16th place they didn’t make any considerable transfers. Their main concern this summer is about keeping talented English players at the club like Anthony Patterson, Jack Clarke and Jobe Bellingham.
However, none of them seem to make the upcoming game less predictable. The series of unsuccessful matches for Sunderland has extended to 3 after they were defeated by Sheffield Wednesday (0-2). They lost 5 of their last 10 matches. Neither is head to head stats in favor of «Black cats». They lost 50 percent of the matches.
What is important is that it usually takes 60 minutes for Nottingham to convert a goal-scoring opportunity. And in the last 10 matches they didn’t convert a goal-scoring opportunity in 2 matches only.
Also both teams have just one draw in total in the last 5 matches.
