We’ve waited 106 days for Championship football to return, but return it has, albeit in a very different guise to what we’ve been used to.
Forest make the short trip up the M1 to take on Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, as the second tier makes a comeback after the stoppage for coronavirus.
Fresh from signing his new two-year deal, Sabri Lamouchi has picked his first Nottingham Forest starting XI in three months, the Reds boss was able unable to call upon Samba Sow or Ben Watson.
Both midfielders had not recovered from their injury problems and their places went to Ryan Yates and Tiago Silva, while Brennan Johnson came in for Joao Carvalho who played last time out against Millwall in March to start a league game for the first time.
There was a return to the extended substitutes bench for Nuno Da Costa and Carl Jenkinson, who were joined by the likes of Carvalho, John Bostock and Michael Dawson.
A win for Forest would see them enhance their prospects of securing a place in the Championship’s top six ahead of their clash with Huddersfield a week tomorrow.
Forest, as Joe Worrall pointed out in the build-up, are keen to get some sort of revenge on Wednesday for the 4-0 drubbing suffered at the hands of Garry Monk’s Owls at the City Ground just before Christmas.
In fact, Forest’s record over the past 10 outings against Wednesday is dismal, winning just once and losing the other nine, a run they’ll be looking to improve this afternoon.
Forest: Samba, Ribiero, Worrall, Figueiredo, Yates, Johnson, Lolley, Ameobi, Silva, Grabban. Subs: Smith, Da Costa, Carvalho, Bostock, Diakhaby, Jenkinson, Semedo, Dawson, Mighten
Owls boss Garry Monk, meanwhile, called upon City Ground hat-trick hero Jordan Rhodes but there was no Fernando Forestieri as contract discussions go on.
