Europa League: Braga vs Nottingham Forest! All four main strikers are out, how will they face this nemesis?

Our first topic today isthe Europa League match: Braga vs Nottingham Forest!

This Nottingham Forest game is definitely worth discussing because of many fascinating aspects.

The cover image shows Guardiola because this match has a bit of a link to him.

As everyone knows, Guardiola often plays tricks and gives a break to weaker teams, occasionally getting shocked by upsets, for example, just a few days ago he lost 3-1 to Shining Brother.

But when it comes to facing Nottingham's coach Sean Dyche, he is incredibly solid.

We see that Dyche has faced Guardiola 19 times with 0 wins, 2 draws, and 17 losses — completely dominated.

The two draws were once when Haaland scored a flying header, and another when Manchester City had already secured the title and didn't care about losing, conceding a last-minute equalizer (that season City led second place by 19 points!).

Dyche’s style emphasizes structure and resilience, but Guardiola’s positional rotations and spatial creativity dissolve Dyche’s defense like sunshine melting ice cream, leaving Dyche helpless and possibly even psychologically affected.

Why talk about Guardiola?

Because Braga’s coach worked at Manchester City as a coach for eight and a half years.

Vicenç has been Guardiola’s assistant since the 20/21 season, assisting in 238 matches until he left after last season.

Guardiola gave him time to coach players like a head coach and discuss matches with them, helping him grow into a fully independent manager.

First, he obviously understands how Guardiola handles Dyche, since as a close assistant he was fully involved in preparations.

Then, after the football world’s top set-piece coach Jofre left, he took over that role at City and achieved success — in the 21/22 season, City scored 21 goals from set pieces, a Premier League record.

We can see that Nottingham’s set-piece defense is very poor,ranking fifth worst in the Premier League and also tied for fifth worst among 36 teams in the Europa League.

When Manchester City plays Nottingham Forest, set pieces are a key breakthrough,recently they even won by a last-minute set-piece goal against Nottingham Forest.

So considering Vicenç was Guardiola’s assistant for many years and managed City’s set pieces,

he might be Braga’s secret weapon today.

In fact, Nottingham themselves have many problems.

For example, in attack, as we all know,Nottingham’s offense is extremely poor, ranking second worst in the Premier League.

A major reason for this is the severe lack of a quality striker:

Last season’s prolific striker Wood, who scored 20 goals, is injured. This season Nottingham has played 22 games but scored only 21 goals total, showing how important Wood was.

Meanwhile, backup striker Awoniyi has also been injury-prone, playing only 182 minutes in the Premier League this season and unavailable tonight, meaning the top two strikers are both out.

Although there is a third striker, Jesus, he has scored just 1 goal in 21 matches, which is quite underwhelming.

The fourth striker, Kalimuendo, due to huge financial pressure, was loaned to Frankfurt and is no longer available. Note, he was a key Europa League striker, scoring against Utrecht and Malmo.

Both Nuno and Dyche are used to building their attack around a striker.

But without a reliable striker, their offense naturally struggles.

That is why,Nottingham currently leads the Premier League with 532 crosses but has only scored 5 goals from themand ranks fourth worst in crossing success rate. Without a dependable striker, crosses are obviously ineffective.

Tonight it’s even worse—Jesus, though weak, is also not available now.

This means,Nottingham has no professional striker available tonightand may be forced to use winger N’Doye as a makeshift striker.

Naturally, I have doubts about their attacking capability.

So, although Nottingham’s squad value is four times Braga’s, and they have recently shown signs of recovery, even drawing with Arsenal, they look more reliable on the surface.

But if we look deeper, Nottingham actually has quite a few problems.

So, can Braga satisfy their fans? What do you all think? I hope they can hold a draw or even win!

Alright, for today’s other matches, I will still send my written views tonight. If anything is unclear, feel free to ask me. Let’s watch the games and understand them together!

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