There's an East Midlands derby in the Sky Bet Championship on Friday night and Tom Carnduff is backing Nottingham Forest for success.
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Nottingham Forest v Derby
- 19:45 BST on Sky Sports Football
- Match odds:
The East Midlands derby is brought to our television screens on Friday night, and while Derby have come the closest to promotion in recent seasons, it's Forest who look as if they could now enjoy a decent campaign in the Sky Bet Championship.
Chris Hughton's appointment as Sabri Lamouchi's replacement has brought an instant impact with victory over Blackburn followed by a draw against Rotherham. The hosts are even money to beat Derby on Friday night and they look good value to do just that.
Derby's 1-0 victory over Norwich remains their only points of the season and they've seen five of their six games end in defeat. With just two goals on the board, they are experiencing issues across the pitch. Forest may only be two spots above them in the league but they have looked to address this by making a managerial change.
One element of this Forest team is the high number of tackles they post. They sit joint-top of the average tackles per game chart in the Championship with 18.5, matched only by Barnsley, and that figure hasn't dropped since Hughton took charge.
There were 15 tackles against Rotherham and 21 against Blackburn. We can expect the figure to be around the 20 mark in a game like this.
That should mean tackles for Ryan Yates, who has been one of Hughton's preferred options in defensive midfield. He has averaged 3.5 tackles per game across his four appearances so far and has had four in two of those contests. At a price of 10/3, it's worth backing him to hit the same figure again here.
Forest's even money price on victory looks a good bet to double your money but their low-scoring campaign so far has them at 3/1 on the -1 handicap, which considering the change in the dugout, may now be worth backing.
This is a Derby team stuck in a tough patch of form and they are struggling to find a way out of it. They have also scored just one goal in their last four games; Forest can punish that with victory on Friday night.
Score prediction: Nottingham Forest 2-0 Derby ()
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Odds correct on 1515 BST (22/10/20)
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