[themaclad]

Nottingham Forest 3 Grabban 2 Colbeck Preston North End 0

Nottingham Forest line-up: Samba; Spence, Worrall, McKenna, Lowe; Yates, Colback, Zinckernagel (Lolley, 68); Johnson, Grabban (Taylor, 70), Mighten (Lolley, 63). Subs not used: Horvath, Figueiredo, Bong, Ojeda.

PNE line-up: Iversen; van den Berg, Bauer (Storey, 20), Hughes; Barkhuizen, Whiteman, McCann, Potts (Sinclair, 56), Earl (Cunningham, 56); Johnson, Riis. Subs not used: Hudson, Ledson, Huntington, Maguire.

Referee: Mr S Hooper

Attendance: 27,129 (1,917 away fans)

Would have taken 3 points from either Forest or Bournemouth games, however this was a disappointment, pivotal moment wasn't the iffy penalty, the soft free kick for teh second and having to listen to Mull of Kintyre twice during the afternoon, it was Bauer's injury and early departure from the game after 20 minutes. Once he was substituted the defence never looked assured again, Storey had a nightmare after coming on, also missed Browne injured and Maguire who was rested to the bench!!!!
Graet atmosphere besides the Trent the first 20 minutes were played at a rapid pace both sides trying to gain a foothold was our best part of the game although Forest threatened it was us who had teh first shot at goal Potts bringing an unthordox save from Samba.
Bauer departed and Forest took charge, went close from Zinkernagel although he had a better option to the left of him and then took the lead from a penalty, interesting decison player fouled was behind Whiteman as he cleared the ball down he went, spot kick given, Grabban down the centre one down
They went close again a minute later as a shot whistled past the far post.
One became two ever so soft free kick by Johnson, ball into box headed towards Colback first time volley(having seen it Potts turns his back on the shot)
Needed a goal before the break and really should have had one, good team play down the right ball onto box Potts puts it in the Trent
Second half rarely threatened the goal although we had plenty of the ball, noticeable Forest harried us at every opportunity and forced us backwards, teh third camme when Johnson waltzed us way through the defence and whoever were in front of him, the ball ended up bouncing in front of Grabban hooked it back towards the goal went in off the post
Less than happy campers demanding the manager vacate the seat interesting as we had won the previous two gamesthink he's facing an uphill battle to convince a few.

Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper:

"It was a good win, it was great to score three goals and keep a clean sheet. I like the fact that we were ruthless in the key moments when we got into scoring positions.

"I actually think that, in terms of general play, we have played better in other games which we have not won. We played better against Fulham I thought, which sounds daft when you consider we lost that game 4-0.

"But I like the fact that when we were not keeping the ball as well as I would have liked, we still did not look like conceding."

Preston boss Frankie McAvoy:

"Losing Patrick [Bauer - defender] 20 minutes into the game didn't help us. But goals change games, along with decisions. I have seen their penalty back and I understand why the referee has given it but it doesn't look like there is much contact there at all.

"We didn't defend well enough, the three goals were all poor ones to concede. We were shot shy and didn't do enough in the final third. We changed it 10 minutes into the second half when we went to a back four and played with three up top. But after that we somehow managed to have even less of a threat. We had more of the ball, we had more possession in the game but we just didn't do enough with it.

"In the first half we were sloppy with the ball and we didn't match runners enough. We did not do enough overall. At the end of the day, it was just disappointing all round."