It’s never a comfortable experience playing under the lights in midweek.
Despite it’s anti-social scheduling for match-going fans, the midweek fixture tends to create the sort of electric atmosphere that lends itself to the host, and even more so to the underdog.
It’s why television companies move fixtures like this, to manufacture the sort of outcome that works for their viewing figures and, by extension, their advertisers.
You don’t have to look very far into the past to recall our own, first-hand experience of this phenomena, especially at the City Ground – we’ve come unstuck there twice in the last few years. Last season’s undoing proved particularly costly in our efforts to wrest the title from Manchester City.
Hopefully, there will be no repeat this time around. If he is looking for a means of motivating his players for tonight, Mikel Arteta won’t have to dig too deep – the wounds of last season will still be keenly felt.
Things are a little different this time around, however. Steve Cooper is no longer at the club for a start and he was possessed of an annoying ability to produce a performance against us. That said, his replacement, Nuno Espirito Santo, has a track record of his own when it comes to facing Arsenal.
For all his struggles in recent years, Nuno is no fool and will almost certainly have a tactical trap waiting for us.
There may be a greater advantage in the personnel who won’t be in attendance, however. Forest have a few players likely to be missing from the line-up because of the ongoing Afcon competition, and that may provide us an edge. It will only be an edge, however, if we assert ourselves.
Though we made light work of Forest at the Emirates earlier this season, they showed late on in that game an aptitude for lightning fast counter-attacks and have honed that style as the season has progressed. Even with the change in management, their approach appears unchanged.
We must be wary.
I have no doubt we will be in control of the ball for long periods and territory is unlikely to be an issue either but being reckless is likely to be punished. Turnovers are going to be the order of the day for Forest and we will need to guard against being caught with too few at the back.
The best way of doing that, of course, is to put your chances away. The drubbing of Crystal Palace a week or so back was welcome but I still feel like it papered over the cracks. Our troubles with finishing will not have been undone in one week.
We can’t keep missing forever, of course, but we need to convert our chances with much greater frequency. Doing so will take the sting out of sides like Forest before they can even become a factor.
Unless the manager has a surprise planned, I don’t expect to see many, if any, changes to the line-up that overcame Palace. For the moment at least, Leandro Trossard should keep his place. In the continued absence of Thomas Partey, everything else should remain as it was – at least from the start.
If we perform at our best, and our finishing matches are build-up, we should really be looking at this fixture as a chance to make up some ground on the league leaders. Anything less would almost certainly be points dropped.
In the second half of the season, the top sides always begin to pull away. We need to be among them or, at the very least, on their coat tails if we are to stand any chance – remote as it may be. Now is not the time to falter.
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