Former Nottingham Forest right-back Brian Laws, who made 147 appearances for the Reds during his playing career, recently appeared on the BBC’s ‘Nottingham Forest Weekly’ podcast, where he shared his thoughts on the prospect of the Reds contesting the East Midlands derby behind closed doors.
As per the EFL’s official website, the Championship is set to restart on 20th June, with the remaining games of the 2019/20 season set to be played behind closed doors.
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Forest are set to play their East Midlands rivals Derby County on 4th July at present.
The 58-year old stated that playing this game behind closed doors is “going to be really hard”.
The former Reds right-back followed up on this statement by saying: “If you look at the German league, they’ve had their local derby games (behind closed doors) and treated it in that same respect and it got quite physical still, which was important to see.”
Laws then goes on to discuss July’s East Midlands derby, saying: “I guess the players will be exactly the same, they’ll still be flying in with tackles, and I think the referee will actually be allowed to let the game flow because he hasn’t got the pressure of the crowd influencing him.”
Do you think that it will be more difficult for Forest to play the East Midlands derby behind closed doors?YES
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TIF Thoughts…
It appears as though Laws is quite positive about the upcoming East Midlands derby retaining its intensity, despite the fact that no fans of either side will be able to attend the fixture.
Forest currently sit in the Championship’s play-off places, five points clear of their nearest challengers outside of the play-off zome. With that in mind, it may be fair to say that the Reds have still got plenty to play for in their remaining nine Championship games and as a result, their players are likely to still be motivated for their upcoming games, including the one against Derby, despite the fact that their fans won’t be in the stadium to cheer them on.