Boss Roy Keane says Nottingham Forest’s progress from relegation strugglers last year to Championship promotion hopefuls this time around gives hope to other clubs such as Town having less than successful seasons. Forest finished 19th in 2008/09 but currently sit in third position, having been the only serious challengers to Newcastle and West Brom for the automatic promotion places.
Keane is expecting a difficult match against his former club at the City Ground on Saturday: "It’s going to be a tough game, Forest are having a very good season when you consider where they were last year and that gives us all a bit of hope that you can turn things around pretty quickly.
"We’re looking forward to it, Forest is a brilliant club but I think our players should go up there and look forward to it.
"We’ve managed to get away from the bottom of the table, but there are a few teams ahead of us and we want to try and get past them.”
The Blues boss was pleased with the two victories over Easter: "They were two tough games for us. The big plus was going to Derby on the Monday. I didn’t make too many changes to the team and the players rolled their sleeves up and got a good result, 3-1.
"We should have been about four up at half-time, but as you’d expect Derby came back into it, but it was pleasing.
"Young Connor did well, Carlos got a goal, young Shane had another run out, Tommy Smith had another run out, so all pluses really.”
Keane confirmed that his side suffered no new injuries and that Jaime Peters will be back in training this morning despite receiving a blow to the head at Derby on Monday and will be in contention for a place in the side against Forest.