WAY,TWO GO JOE Lolley pops in brace to fire Forest up the table
JOE LOLLEY’S brace set Nottingham Forest up to gatecrash the top two. Lolley was helped by a Luton howler from Simon Sluga for his first goal but his second was a cracker as he took the visitors apart.
A 10th successive away league defeat leaves Luton bottom of the Championship, but Forest are making big progress at the top end. If they beat Reading on Wednesday they will be two points behind second-placed Leeds. And Forest then will play Leeds at home and league leaders West Brom away next month.
Lolley said: “Six or seven games ago the division was thinking, ‘Is anyone going to catch the top two?’
“Now there are four or five teams thinking, ‘Why not? Why not us?’ Leeds and West Brom will be massive games. The tighter it becomes, the bigger the games become. It is exciting.”
Harry Cornick gave Luton a 23rd-minute lead after build-up work from Kazenga LuaLua and Dan Potts. But then came Lolley.
Keeper Sluga should have stopped Lolley’s 36th-minute shot but allowed the ball to squirm away and go in. For his second, Lolley took a great BenWatson pass and blasted a fierce, twisting shot in.
Lewis Grabban, with a 90th-minute penalty after a Sonny Bradley handball, then finished Luton off.
But Hatters boss Graeme Jones remains positive. He said: “We have 18 games left and I believe we can get out of it. Seven weeks ago we were a competitive Championship team. We can be again when we get everyone fit.”
FOREST (4-2-3-1): Samba 6; Cash 6, Dawson 7, Worrall 7, Ribeiro 6; Watson 8, Sow 7; Lolley 9 (Yates 83), Silva 7 (Carvalho 90), Adomah 6 (Ameobi 67, 5); Grabban 6. Goals: Lolley 36, 57, Grabban 90 pen.
LUTON (4-1-4-1): Sluga 5; Bree 6, Pearson 6, Bradley 6, Potts 5; Rea 7 (Lee 72, 5); Cornick 6 (Moncur 49, 5), Mpanzu 6, Tunnicliffe 6, LuaLua 6; Collins 5.
Goal: Cornick 23.
LEWIS HOLTBY needed a crash course to get used to the bumps and bruises of the Championship.
The former German international is now up to speed and ready to propel Blackburn’s bid for the play-offs.
Holtby, right, who signed in September, scored twice in Rovers’ big 5-0 win at Sheffield Wednesday.
“I send my friends pictures of my legs after the game,” he said.
“It’s a tough league, a good league.You have a lot of very good individual players and every game is a fight, like a cup final.”
At Loftus Road it was left to Queens Park Rangers goalkeeper Liam Kelly to offer Leeds fans hope that promotion to the Premier League won’t prove a mirage again.
QPR won 1-0 and Kelly, the man who denied them by saving Patrick Bamford’s penalty, said: “We’re delighted to see the back of Leeds, to be honest. We’ll never face a press
SLAVEN BILIC has told his West Brom players to enjoy life at the top.
Bilic’s Baggies were not expecting to kick-off against Stoke tonight still looking down on the rest, but Leeds lost at QPR on Saturday.
Albion might well have been way out in front but for a blip, but Bilic wants his side to keep smiling and enjoy the ride.
“If you’re not positive you have no chance,” he said. “You can’t brush things under the carpet when things go like that again this season.”
Millwall beat Reading 2-0 and defender Murray Wallace sees no reason why they cannot be contenders. “The performance was really good,” said Wallace. “Reading have been in form and they’ve got dangerous players, so to limit them to so few chances was a positive.
“The way we played, I don’t see why we can’t make the play-offs.” wrong but you must always be optimists. People talk about fatigue but winning makes you less fatigued.”
He warned of struggling Stoke: “They have a Premier League squad. You can just be a bit unlucky sometimes.”
Stoke boss Michael O’Neill said: “We see it as an opportunity, albeit a very difficult one, to add to our points tally.”