Davies - can guide Forest to win.
FOREST TO BITE IN BERKSHIRE
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Of all the great managers who have found themselves plying their trade in the Championship over the last few years, few have been able to get results like Billy Davies.
The belligerent Glaswegian might not be everyone's cup of tea but his ability to control the outcome of football matches is undeniable - his record simply speaks for itself.
An average return of 1.73 points per game over the course of 153 matches is bettered only by Mick McCarthy (1.87) and that's without taking into consideration the comparatively huge budgets the Yorkshireman had at his disposal at Sunderland and Wolves.
By contrast, Davies spent most of his three years at Preston and Derby rummaging around the bargain bucket - his biggest signing at this level was Steve Howard for £1m in July 2006 - but you always knew that a player's performance level would spike once he had been subjected to the personal attention of the wee Scot's DVD home editing suite.
After a difficult first few months at the City Ground, steering Nottingham Forest away from danger with a squad lacking big-match experience, Davies is back in control of his own destiny once again and we shouldn't expect too much to have changed in the two years he has been away.
Forest travel to Reading on Saturday and they look decent value to land all three points at odds of 7/2 when you consider the problems the Royals experienced in front of their own fans towards the end of last season.
The Berkshire club failed to win any of their last nine matches at home, finding the net just three times in the last 15 hours at the Madejski, and though there will be a freshness about them in Brendan Rodgers' first game as manager, Forest will be looking to re-open those old wounds.
As such, it might also be worth staking a point on Nottingham Forest to win to nil at 13/2 considering that Davies boasts a clean sheet ratio of better than one in three in the aforementioned sample.
Elsewhere, we're going to follow up on our advice in the outright preview by siding with two of our handicap fancies to achieve winning starts on the road.
Enough has already been said about Bristol City in our pre-season coverage but they do look decent value at 3/1 against Preston.
The Lilywhites pulled off an incredible coup when pipping Cardiff to a play-off place at the end of last season but it ultimately ended in disappointment with an agonising defeat at Bramall Lane denying them a day out at Wembley.
Now the mood around Deepdale might seem rather flat in comparison to those amazing scenes witnessed on the final day and the Robins can take advantage.
As Gary Johnson pointed out in his interview with us, his teams tend to hit the ground running at the start of a new season and they will head up the M6 in a positive frame of mind, knowing they triumphed down the road at Blackpool this time last year.
Meanwhile, Doncaster have already been backed on the handicap and in a season match bet with Watford, so we might as well go the whole hog and take the 3/1 on them beating the Hornets at Vicarage Road on Saturday.
We've already registered our scepticism at the appointment of Malky Mackay and he will be taking over the team with the second-worst defensive record in the division last season.
Donny are another team with fond memories of an away win on the opening day last season - they won 1-0 at Derby - and if they can recapture anything like the form they showed in the second half of last season, then a maximum haul shouldn't prove beyond their reach.
Preview posted at 1755BST on 06/08/2009
