If you can cast aside thoughts of a couple of not insignificant cup blips, first a 2-2 draw with Bristol City culminating in defeat by penalties, and of course Sunday’s game in Wiltshire in which Salisbury City held us to a 1-1 draw, then we’re actually on pretty good form. We’ve won five of our last six league games, drawing the other with in-form Rotherham United; this run of excellent league form has left us six points clear atop League One.
Bournemouth have won only one game in the last nine, and that was against League Two Boston United in the FA Cup first round. In their last six league games they’ve managed one point – so a kind of mirror of our form really, losing five and drawing one. Inevitably this poor run of form leaves them scrapping relegation. Hmm, sound familiar, team at the top, on good league form, goes to a team at the bottom on bad form?
Smoulderwood will apparently have to continue to cope without the services of Paul Smith and Junior Agogo, both of whom still haven’t recovered from their injuries. Sammy Clingan should be available, however, which is promising news since Gary Holt picked up a knock at the weekend – as did Nathan Tyson – so perhaps having all those strikers on standby isn’t such a bad thing. So we’re likely to have a lineup not too dissimilar to the Salisbury City game, methinks.
Once Forest target (well, who hasn’t been? 
) James Hayter is probably the player to watch out for; he’s a 20+ goal a season striker and just bagged his 7th goal of the campaign, so he’ll be keen to keep banging them in to make sure he gets to the magic number this season. He’s is an old-school poacher type of striker, with a lethal predatory instict – so we’ll need to be on our toes and do a better job on him than we did with Matt Tubbs on Sunday!
Given the form and respective teams then you’d expect us to triumph, but then, I would have expected us to triumph on sunday, so what does the form book know? However both Smoulders and the lads will be keen to avert any attention from our Johnstone’s Paint and FA Cup blips; and maintain our momentum in the league. Also if BBC Radio Nottingham’s Matchtalk programme can be believed, Smoulds says we’re going to be wearing the yellow away kit for the first time in ages. Maybe that will be just enough to swing the balance in Bournemouth’s favour…
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