Newcastle United vs. Nottingham Forest 8/6/22 EPL Soccer Picks, Predictions, and Odds

Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest face off on Saturday in an English Premier League showdown at St. James Park. The last time these two teams faced off was in 2018 and Nottingham Forest won 3-1. 

Newcastle United really struggled to start the season last year, but it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish, and they played much better in the second half of the season. Newcastle ended up in 11th place in the standings, having picked up 49 points. Newcastle wasn’t super busy in the transfer portal, but they did bring in Sven Botman from Lille and Matt Targett from Aston Villa. The star player of this Newcastle team is Bruno Guimaraes, who came to the team in January. This is a player who should play for Brazil in the World Cup and will be a factor in this game. This is a team that has dreams of finishing in the top seven, and they need to win games like this if they want to do that. 

On the other side of this matchup is Nottingham Forest, and they will be back in the Premier League for the first time in 23 years. Manager Steve Cooper did a brilliant job to get the team to this point, but now he has even more pressure on him, to keep the team up here for a while. Nottingham leaned on their defense last year to find success and players like Scott McKenna, Steve Cook and Joe Worrall are going to be leaned on heavily. The big addition this off season was Jesse Lingard who never really lived up to the expectations at Manchester United, but maybe with some of the pressure off here, he will play freer, and have a lot more success. Over the last four games in the preseason, Nottingham has one win, one loss, and two draws.

Like stated above, Nottingham is going to need to lean on the defense to find success, but in this game, that defense isn’t going to be all that strong. Newcastle is going to score at least a couple of goals, and Nottingham just doesn’t have the offense to keep this game close. Back Newcastle on the money line.