Another hectic week in the Sky Bet Championship season gets underway on Friday evening when QPR will look to get over the disappointment of their exit in the Carabao Cup when they play host to Nottingham Forest.
QPR start the night in seventh place as one of the multitude of teams on 21 points but they can end it in fourth spot if they win here. Forest have pulled away from trouble and can move up a couple more spaces in the table if they win here.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on both the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels. The show begins at 7pm and the kick off in London is at 7.45pm.
QPR
QPR head into this match just outside the playoff places so the thoughts of many that they could be promotion candidates this term has been justified. There has been a little bit of a lack of consistency, which comes about in the huge discrepancy between their home form and their away form. They have only lost one match on their home patch this season but have lost their last four on the road so they will be delighted that this match is in London.
The big test for the Rs here will be backing up after Tuesday night. Mark Warburton started five players who started last weekend and brought another couple off the bench so with this being a third match in six days that has to be a bit of a concern going in here. The other concern is the rate from which they concede goals. Nobody have conceded more goals in the top half than their 22, a figure which is double the total the bottom team in the league have let in.
Nottingham Forest
The season so far has been a tale of two halves for Nottingham Forest. The first part of it under Chris Hughton was absolutely dreadful but the second bit of it after his departure has been very good, even allowing for the fact they got smoked by Fulham in their latest outing last weekend. They weren’t the first team to suffer that fate and you suspect they won’t be the last so it would be foolish to hold that against them.
One area where Nottingham Forest have improved under Steve Cooper is scoring goals. They were not able to penetrate the Fulham defence on Sunday but prior to that they had found the net 10 times in their four previous outings. They have also picked up away from home and have won all four away matches they have played under their new manager, so Forest will be heading to the capital in decent enough spirits you would think.
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Team News
QPR are going to be without the trio of Lee Wallace, Sam Field and Charlie Owens and boss Mark Warburton will need to decide whether to rotate his men, particularly those who will be playing a third match in six days.
Steve Cooper remains without a number of players but could recall Lyle Taylor to the starting XI. There will be no Loic Mbe Soh, Rodrigo Ely or Braian Ojeda among others for the City Ground outfit.
Betting
I think there is a strong potential for goals here. In fairness there is always that potential whenever QPR are on the pitch. They score a lot of goals but they concede them at quite a lick too. There has never been an issue with Nottingham Forest in terms of the attacking talent they have at their disposal but perhaps they had the wrong man in charge to utilise it until recently. They have certainly rectified that issue and look much the better for it.
Prior to failing to score against Fulham, Forest were finding the net at will but they still haven’t completely sorted out the defensive side of things and against a pretty attacking QPR side I’m not sure this is the night which is going to change that. There is a vulnerability in both of these sides defensively but there is also some quality going forward in both of them and I fancy that can lead to over 2.5 goals coming in here.
Tips
Back Over 2.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with William Hill
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