Nottingham Forest took a two nil victory over Port Vale in the most recent friendly yesterday evening.
Matt Mills opened the scoring before Britt Assombalonga doubled our advantage, and new manager manager Philippe Montanier fielded an even younger side for this game compared to the starting eleven chosen against Braga last week.
Incoming for this game was Jordan Gabriel, Jorge Grant, Ryan Yates, Anel Ahmedhodzic, Alex Iacovitti and Joe Worrall all starting. The experience came from Dorus de Vries, Ben Osborn, Lars Veldwijk, Mills and Assombalonga.
Forest:
De Vries (Evtimov 45), Gabriel, Worrall, Mills (Lam 45), Iacovitti, Yates (Cohen 85, Lansbury 88), Ahmedhodzic (Cash 83), Assombalonga, Osborn (Vellios 30, Burke 63), Grant, Veldwijk.
I’m not sure of the exact substitute time for Henri Lansbury coming on, but it was a few minutes after Cohen arrived as he picked up a minor knock.
Speaking to the Official Forest Site following the game, Montanier explained.
‘We had a young team today and it was an opportunity for me to see more of them. The second objective was to give some of them 90 minutes. We are happy to win the game, and that will always be the objective even in friendlies, but it was a physical, tactical and technical objective too and that was tough for my young players.’
The new gaffer went on to say that he was still pondering his preferred starting line up as of course some new faces could still arrive and we have people coming back from injury as well, but he has been pleased with what he’s seen from the youngsters so far.
‘It`s too early at the moment. I don`t have a lot of choice but that gives the young players an opportunity to show their qualities. The market is not easy and we have to be patient to recruit good players for the squad. We have different targets but it`s too early to announce anything.’
