Match Day Thread Nottingham Forest v Preston North End City Ground 8/5/2021

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FORM GUIDE

FOREST 7 PNE 13

CITY GROUND

The City Ground is a football stadium in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, on the banks of the River Trent. It has been home to Nottingham Forest Football Club since 1898, and has 30,445 seats.

The stadium was a venue when England hosted Euro 96, and is only three hundred yards (270 m) away from Meadow Lane, home of Forest's neighbouring club Notts County; the two grounds are the closest professional football stadiums in England and the second-closest in the United Kingdom after the grounds of Dundee and Dundee United. They are located on opposite sides of the River Trent.Nottingham Forest moved to their new ground on 3 September 1898 – 33 years after their formation and six years after election to the Football League.

To raise the £3,000 required to finance the move the club asked members, supporters and businessmen to subscribe to "New Ground Scheme" bearer bonds which cost £5 each. Over £2,000 was raised this way.

The new ground was called the City Ground. It was only a few hundred yards from the old Town Ground at the opposite end of Trent Bridge, which had been named after the Town Arms pub. Nottingham was granted its Charter as a City in 1897 and it was called the City Ground to commemorate this as the land on which it stands was at that time within the City boundary. In 1952 boundary changes resulted in the ground coming under the local council of West Bridgford (Rushcliffe Borough Council) rather than the City. Opposite the City Ground, still within the City boundaries, lies Meadow Lane, home of Notts County. The City Ground was wide open on three sides with no protection from the weather but the pitch was one of the finest in the country. This was due to the presence on the committee of J. W. Bardill, a nurseryman whose family firm still exists in Stapleford near Nottingham and whose company was given the task of preparing the pitch.

In 1935, the club had the opportunity to buy the ground from Nottingham Corporation for £7,000 but they declined.

On 12 October 1957, a new East Stand opened at the City Ground, costing £40,000 and having benches to seat up to 2,500 fans. The visitors for the opening were Manchester United’s "Busby Babes", just four months before eight of them died in the Munich air disaster. On 11 September 1961, the floodlights at the ground were officially turned on for the first time as Forest faced Gillingham in the League Cup.[7] A new record attendance of 49,946 was set in October 1967 when Forest beat Manchester Utd 3-1 in a First Division fixture, five months after Forest had finished second to United in the league. In December 1967 the City Ground was host to an England U23 match against Italy.[8]

The Main Stand was largely rebuilt in 1965 but, on 24 August 1968, fire broke out during a First Division game against Leeds United.[9] It started in the boiler room, just before half-time. The stand was damaged but, despite a crowd numbering 31,126, none of them were injured.[9] The only reported injuries were to a television crew on the TV gantry, who had to scramble down it because the access ladder was stored in the boiler room. The gantry was extended the length of the stand and now has access at both ends. As a result of the fire, Forest played six 'home' matches at nearby Meadow Lane and did not win one of them. Sadly many of the club's records, trophies and other memorabilia were lost in the fire. The stand was refurbished.The Executive Stand was built in 1980 at a cost of £2 million — largely from proceeds of the highly successful era in which Forest brought the European Cup back to Nottingham in 1979 and 1980, having won the league title in 1978. Forest also won the Football League Cup twice during that era.

Under Clough's reign, Forest had taken the English domestic game and the European scene by storm and money raised from those successes was invested in a stand that had a capacity of 10,000. It was renamed The Brian Clough Stand after his retirement, and was re-opened after refurbishment by the man himself in the mid-1990s. The stand also incorporated 36 executive boxes and a large dining area, which was designed to be the focus of the club's corporate hospitality arrangements.


Aerial image showing the proximity of the City Ground (bottom) to Meadow Lane.
Nottingham Forest had been the opposing team in the fateful FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Hillsborough, Sheffield, on 15 April 1989, in which 96 Liverpool fans were fatally injured in a human crush on the stadium's terraces. The disaster resulted in the Taylor Report ordering that all clubs in the top two divisions of English football should have an all-seater stadium by August 1994. This resulted in the need for more redevelopment and refurbishment at the City Ground.

More major development took part in 1992–93 with the rebuilding of the Bridgford Stand. Work started in April 1992 and when completed the Stand had a capacity of 7,710, the lower tier of 5,131 being allocated to away supporters. The unusual shape of the roof was a planning requirement to allow sunlight to reach houses in nearby Colwick Road. The Stand includes accommodation for 70 wheelchair supporters.[10] It also houses a management suite, which includes the public address systems, computerised electronic scoreboard controls and the police matchday operation.

The Trent End was the most recent stand to be rebuilt between 1994 and 1996 — in time for Euro 96, the European Football Championships. The new stand, such a prominent landmark by the River Trent, held 7,338 to take the ground's capacity to 30,576 all-seated.

The ground would be able to expand to up to 46,000 if ever there was ever a return to the top flight. Forest were relegated from the FA Premier League three times between 1993 and 1999. Although they achieved promotion at the first attempt following the first two relegations, they have yet to return to the Premier League since their relegation in 1999 and even spent three seasons in League One - English football's third tier.

On 20 June 2007, the Forest board announced plans for a possible relocation to a new 50,000-seat stadium in the city, although such a move was not expected to take place before 2014. This was part of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup, but in December 2010 England's World Cup bid was rejected in favour of Russia being selected as the host nation.

Several improvements to the stadium have been made since the Trent End rebuild such as two new LED Screens being installed between the Trent End and the Brian Clough Stand and in the far corner of the Bridgford Stand. A small number of seats were lost because of this. LED advertising boards were also installed around the perimeter of the pitch excluding the Main Stand. These improvements cost around £1 million.

The City Ground also hosted the FA Women's Cup Final for two successive years in 2007 and 2008. The 2007 final was contested by Arsenal L.F.C. and Charlton Athletic L.F.C. with the attendance of 24,529 smashing the previous record attendance for the competition of 13,824 for the final between Arsenal L.F.C. and Fulham L.F.C. at Selhurst Park in 2001. In 2008, the attendance record was broken once again when 24,582 spectators saw Arsenal L.F.C. beat Leeds United 4–1.

Aside from football, the stadium has also hosted two other large-scale events. On 28 April 2002 the stadium hosted a semi-final of rugby's Heineken Cup in which Leicester Tigers beat Llanelli Scarlets 13–12. Leicester Tigers once again played at City Ground when they were defeated 19-16 by Racing 92 on 24 April 2016 in the semi-final of the European Rugby Champions Cup. The stadium hosted its first music concert when R.E.M. performed there[11] in front of an audience of 20,000.

In October 2015, Forest renamed the Main Stand, "The Peter Taylor Stand" after former European Cup winning assistant-manager Peter Taylor, who died 25 years earlier.[12]

Following issues with the ground's safety certificate, the capacity of the stadium was reduced to 24,357 ahead of the 2016–17 season.[13]

FAMOUS NOTTINGHAM PERSON

Mary Howitt (12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English poet, the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She translated several tales by Hans Christian Andersen.
On 16 April 1821 she married William Howitt and began a career of joint authorship with him. Her life was bound up with that of her husband; she was separated from him only during a period when he journeyed to Australia (1851–1854).[1] She and her husband wrote over 180 books.[4]

They lived initially in Heanor in Derbyshire, where William was a pharmacist.[3] Not until 1823, when they were living in Nottingham, did William decide to give up his business with his brother Richard and concentrate with Mary on writing.[3] Their literary productions at first consisted mainly of poetry and other contributions to annuals and periodicals. A selection appeared in 1827 as The Desolation of Eyam and other Poems.

The couple mixed with many literary figures, including Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. On moving to Esher in 1837, Howitt began writing a long series of well-known tales for children, with signal success.[1] In 1837 they toured Northern England and stayed with William and Dorothy Wordsworth.[3] Their work was generally well regarded: in 1839 Queen Victoria gave George Byng a copy of Mary's Hymns and Fireside Verses.[3]

William and Mary moved to London in 1843, and after a second move in 1844, counted Tennyson amongst their neighbours.[3] In 1853 they moved to West Hill in Highgate[5] close to Hillside, the home of their friends, the physician and sanitary reformer Thomas Southwood Smith and his partner, the artist Margaret and her sister Mary Gillies. Mary Howitt had some years earlier arranged that the children's writer Hans Christian Andersen would visit Hillside to see the haymaking during his trip to England in 1847.[6]In the early 1840s Mary Howitt was residing in Heidelberg, where her literary friends included Shelley's biographer Thomas Medwin and the poet Caroline de Crespigny, and her attention was drawn to Scandinavian literature. She and a friend, Madame Schoultz, set about learning Swedish and Danish. She then translated into English and introduced Fredrika Bremer's novels (1842–1863, 18 vols). Howitt also translated many of Hans Christian Andersen's tales, such as[1]

Only a Fiddler (1845)
The Improvisators (1845, 1847) 1900 edition at the Internet Archive
Wonderful Stories for Children (1846)
The True Story of every Life (1847).[1]
Among her original works were The Heir of Wast-WayIand (1847). She edited for three years the Drawing-room Scrap Book, writing, among other articles, "Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England". She edited the Pictorial Calendar of the Seasons, translated Joseph Ennemoser's History of Magic, and took the chief share in The Literature and Romance of Northern Europe (1852). She also produced a Popular History of the United States (2 vols, 1859), and a three-volume novel called The Cost of Caergwyn (1864).[1]

Mary's brother-in-law Godfrey Howitt, his wife and her family emigrated to Australia, arriving at Port Phillip in April 1840.[7] In June 1852, the three male Howitts, accompanied by Edward La Trobe Bateman, sailed there, hoping to make a fortune. Meanwhile, Mary and her two daughters moved into The Hermitage, Bateman's cottage in Highgate, which had previously been occupied by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.[8]

The men returned from Australia a number of years later. William wrote several books describing its flora and fauna.[3] Their son, Alfred William Howitt, achieved renown as an Australian explorer, anthropologist and naturalist; he discovered the remains of the explorers Burke and Wills, which he brought to Melbourne for burial.

Mary Howitt had several other children. Charlton Howitt was drowned while engineering a road in New Zealand. Anna Mary Howitt spent a year in Germany with the artist Wilhelm von Kaulbach, an experience she wrote up as An Art-Student in Munich. She married Alaric Alfred Watts, wrote a biography of her father, and died while on a visit to her mother in Tirol in 1884.[9] Margaret Howitt wrote the Life of Fredrika Bremer and a memoir of her own mother.[10]

Mary Howitt's name was attached as author, translator or editor to at least 110 works. She received a silver medal from the Literary Academy of Stockholm, and on 21 April 1879 gained a civil list pension of £100 a year. In her declining years she joined the Roman Catholic Church, and was one of an English deputation received by Pope Leo XIII on 10 January 1888. Her Reminiscences of my Later Life were printed in Good Words in 1886. The Times wrote of her and her husband:

Their friends used jokingly to call them William and Mary, and to maintain that they had been crowned together like their royal prototypes. Nothing that either of them wrote will live, but they were so industrious, so disinterested, so amiable, so devoted to the work of spreading good and innocent literature, that their names ought not to disappear unmourned.

Mary Howitt was away from her residence in Meran in Tirol, spending the winter in Rome, when she died of bronchitis on 30 January 1888.[1]

Given the game is behind closed doors and Mary is dead she won't be at the game

 

Preston North End will look to end the season with a positive result as they head to face Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Saturday lunchtime.

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Results in recent weeks have got the Lilywhites into a position where they know they will finish in either 13th or 14th position, with a win able to take them to 61 points should they beat Chris Hughton’s side.

Forest were victorious at Deepdale back in the opening game of the calendar year, when a controversial penalty, that Lewis Grabban struck twice, proved the only goal of the game.

It will also be Gentry Day on Saturday, virtually, with the team looking to remember all those we have lost connected with the club in the past 12 months by putting on a positive display in what everyone hopes is the last ever game without fans.

Head To Head: PNE wins – 33; Draws – 31; Nottingham Forest - 42

Team News
There are no new concerns for Frankie McAvoy ahead of the team’s last game of the season, with Daniel Johnson, Declan Rudd, Patrick Bauer and Joe Rafferty all missing out, but hopefully all being fit by the next time the players pull on a shirt in anger in July.

For Chris Hughton, Luke Freeman looks like missing out again and thus he would have played the last game of his loan spell with the Reds.

For last weekend’s trip to Sheffield Wednesday, they were also without Sammy Ameobi (ankle) and Samba Sow (groin), with the latter unlikely to be ready for this one, but Ameobi should be back.

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Match Officials
Darren Bond will take charge of a Lilywhites game for the final time this season – his third game, after Millwall at home and Boxing Day’s last minute victory over Derby County at Pride Park.

This will be his first – and last – trip to the City Ground this season, having only officiated Forest on the road at Norwich City back in the early stages of the season.

Last season he refereed our July trip to Huddersfield Town and the Boxing Day draw with Leeds United. Prior to the clash with the Peacocks, he had not taken charge of a North End game since February 2019, when the game with Derby County ended goalless at Deepdale.

Darren in 2017/18 also officiated our 2-1 win at Bristol City and the 2-0 victory over Sunderland up at the Stadium of Light in March.

This will be his 32nd game of this season, having issued 102 yellow cards and six reds so far. The referee will be assisted by Robert Hyde and George Byrne, with Ross Joyce as the fourth official.

 

1 down Garner

 

Bayliss 1 all

 

According to the BBC, Garner's goal was superb, Bayliss' handball and the second NE goal was off-side! Who cares? End of season stuff.

 

Nottingham Forest 1 Preston North End 2

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@pnefc

Second half goals from Tom Bayliss and Liam Lindsay gave Preston North End a Gentry Day win on the final afternoon of the season against Chris Hughton’s Nottingham Forest at the City Ground.

They finished the campaign in 13th spot after their fourth win in a row, as they came from behind after James Garner’s superb 25-yard opener for Forest in the opening 20 minutes; Bayliss nudging home Scott Sinclair’s cross and Lindsay powering a header home, after Ched Evans’ header across goal from Bayliss’ cross-field ball.

Interim head coach Frankie McAvoy’s eighth game in the top job saw two changes from the final home game of the season, with Tom Bayliss starting his first league game since the reverse fixture, back at Deepdale on January 2nd.

Top scorer Sinclair also returned to the side, partnering Evans in attack, with Ben Whiteman and Tom Barkhuizen dropping to the bench for the game played amidst very wet conditions at the City Ground.

The visitors started well and should have been ahead before the tenth minute. A clever throw in from Evans on the left sent skipper Alan Browne down the touchline; he found Cunningham, who delivered a superb ball in for the run of Evans, who had burst into the box and lofted a header over Brice Samba, but just onto the roof of the net from 12 yards out.

But it was the visitors who took the lead on 17 minutes, as a loose ball fell to James Garner in the middle of the pitch, 30 yards from goal, and he unleashed a vicious strike, which took the slightest of deflections off Ryan Ledson, causing it to swerve and dip into the bottom right-hand corner, giving Daniel Iversen no chance and ruining his opportunity of a tenth clean sheet of his loan spell.

Reds captain Lewis Grabban tested Iversen mid-way through the half, as Garner switched the ball out to Anthony Knockaert on the right, who pulled a cross back to the striker on the edge of the penalty area, but his effort was straight at PNE’s Daish stopper.

The Lilywhites came out reinvigorated after the break and were close to levelling matters less than three minutes in as Evans found Browne, who reversed the ball for Scott Sinclair near the penalty spot, only for Joe Worrall to nip in and take the ball off the attacker’s right boot as he was about to pull the trigger.

And they were level on 53 minutes. It was a Ledson ball from inside his own half, threading it right down the middle, brilliantly dummied by Evans, to allow Sinclair to race in from the left and deliver a clever ball across into the six-yard box for Bayliss to divert home from a couple of years out for his first strike in North End colours.

After a spell of PNE pressure, Ryan Yates fired narrowly wide for the hosts after some good play from the right by Knockaert, to create some space for the midfielder to side foot an effort from the edge of the ‘D’.

But PNE were in front at the half’s mid-point and Bayliss was involved again, this time with a superb switch from the left to Evans, who headed back across goal, where Lindsay powered home a header from ten yards out.

The goal was not awarded immediately, as referee Darren Bond needed to discuss an offside call much earlier in the build-up, but after debating with his assistant, the goal was given.

Evans nearly had his own and the Lilywhites’ third just seconds later, after as he showed great strength to hold off Worrall and then run away from him before hitting a hard low effort from 25 yards, arrowed towards the bottom right-hand corner, tipped behind by Samba.

Ben Whiteman and Tom Barkhuizen replaced Ledson – who had just been booked - and goalscorer Bayliss with 20 minutes to go and the changes also saw three attackers, Sinclair and Barkhuizen either side of Evans, as North End looked for a third.

Four minutes were added on by referee Bond, with Sean Maguire and Brad Potts also into the mix for Sinclair and Evans and they took the points to end the season with four straight wins.

Nottingham Forest line-up: Samba, Christie, Worrall, Ribeiro, Mbe Soh, Grabban (c) (Murray, 82), Yates, Krovinovic (Mighten, 74), Knockaert, Taylor, Garner. Subs not used: Smith, Figueiredo, Colback, Jenkinson, Cafu, Blackett, Murray, McKenna.

PNE line-up: Iversen, van den Berg, Storey, Lindsay, Hughes, Cunningham, Ledson (Whiteman, 70), Bayliss (Barkhuizen, 70), Browne (c), Evans (Maguire, 89), Sinclair (Potts, 82). Subs not used: Ripley, Riis, Molumby, Huntington, Gordon.

Referee: Mr D Bond.

Forest boss Chris Hughton:

"I have seen it and I felt the first goal was handball. The ball comes off the top end of his arm and it was definitely handball.

"The second one the linesman had his flag up and [Alan] Browne was in an offside position and he moved back into an onside position, without touching the ball. But what he did do is impede Cyrus Christie.

"We were really good in the first half and we had chances - good chances - but we have come away from the game without anything.

"It is a reflection of what has happened to us this season. We have to be better in the final third next season, otherwise we will find ourselves with the same problems."

Preston interim manager Frankie McAvoy:

"The flag was up for offside and we had been shouting to Alan [Browne] not to go. We could see that there was somebody in a better position outside him.

"Thankfully it went our way, we played to the whistle and Liam came up with a good goal for us.

"We were a wee bit lethargic in the first half. We had a good opportunity through Ched [Evans] to score, but other than that we did not play well enough.

"We got them in and had a chat with them and they managed to do the things we asked of them in the second half, which was a lot better for us."