Nottingham Forest vs Bayer Leverkusen live team news, build-up and action
· Brian Dick · 2026-08-12T16:43:57+00:00 · nguồn gốc
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Nottingham Forest vs Bayer Leverkusen live team news as Oliver Glasner makes Ousmane Diomande call
Nottingham Forest face Bayer Leverkusen at the City Ground in their penultimate warm-up game
Nottingham Forest are back at the City Ground for the first time this summer as they take on Bundesliga outfit Bayer Leverkusen.
Oliver Glasner takes charge of the Reds for the first home game since replacing Vitor Pereira in July.
He does so having put his new players through an exacting pre-season that has seen them face Notts County, Blackburn Rovers, Vitoria de Guimaraes, Portimonense, Sporting, Udinese and Barcelona.
Leverkusen represent the penultimate game, with Brest to come on Sunday.
The match kicks off at 7.45pm, with team news coming around an hour beforehand, Reach Football Correspondent Brian Dick is in the press-box and will bring you all the action. Stay tuned and you won't miss a thing.
The Forest subs come out, while Glasner slips into his technical area quietly. He's spotted though and he gets a pretty good level of applause, he rotates to clap back at all four stands without making a big thing of it.
The players follow them, Forest are in their red and white, Leverkusen are in white shirts and (bear with my colour-blindness) a bluey-green shade of shorts.
The Reds will attack the Trent End in this first half.
The lower tiers of three stands are pretty well occupied but the uppers aren't open. Potentially there's still quite a few people outside waiting to get in.
I've been told Glasner will be doing press after the game, so we'll have more on Chris Wood - hopefully.
Just a couple of minutes until kick-off.
The eclipse is casting an eerie light into the City Ground now, turning everything a shade of orange.
The Forest players have just run out to a smattering of applause, Diomande is out there with them, moving around nicely as they run through a pre-match rondo.
The Ivorian gets a nice cheer as his name is read out - not as much as Gibbs-White though.
We've got 25 minutes until kick-off.
Meanwhile at the risk of characterising a spectacular astral event as anything other than magnificent, the whole eclipse thing was a bit meh. Maybe I should have liked straight at it.
England international Jarell Quansah is not involved tonight, former Brentford goalkeeper Mark Flekken is on the bench.
Captain - and leading goalscorer - Patrik Schick, does begin the game.
Lever's XI is: Blaswich, Gutierrez, Bade, Fernandez, Tillman, Terrier, Schick, Poku, Vazquez, Maza. Belocian.
Subs: Flekken, Lomb, Hofmann, Moreira, Tapsoba, Arthur, Dermann, Boniface, Garcia, Berghoff, Alfra-Ruprecht, Dogonay, Hawighorst, Kofane
We'll get to see Dio for the first time tonight, but Xaver Schlager is also set to play at the City Ground for the first time.
The line-up will be something along the lines of: Sels; Murillo, Milenkovic, Diomande; Aina, Sangare, Schlager, Williams; Ndoye, Igor Jesus, Gibbs-White.
Chris Wood not involed, I'll ask Glasner about him post-match.
Diomande starts, alongside Murillo and Milenkovic
I'll confess I don't know if there's any friction between Leverkusen and Hamburg - but the German club's social media team clearly remember the 1980 European Cup final.
As everyone will remember Bayer Leverkusen upset the natural order in German football a couple of years ago when now Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso guided them to a remarkable first Bundesliga title in their history.
Last season they finished sixth and missed out on Champions League qualification. They have though qualified for the Group stage of the Europa League.
So far this summer they've won all five of their matches, most recently beating Sevilla 2-1 thanks to two goals from Patrik Schick.
In June they appointed former Toulouse boss Carles Martínez Novell as head coach, having started last season with Erik ten Hag in charge. He was then replaced by Kasper Hjulmand.
Obviously we're not at full capacity for this pre-season game but you can get your hands on the new home kit.
The Fanzone will be closed for this evening’s fixture, and Sunday’s fixture vs Stade Brestois 29, but will be open for our Premier League opener versus Leeds United on Saturday 22 August.
The Megastore is open until kick-off, and the Trent End/Museum Store will be open from 5.30pm BST. Both stores will remain open until kick-off, and the Megastore will open again at full-time for up to 45 minutes.
Fans could get a first sighting of £34m defender Ousmane Diomande, who was on the bench for Sporting's opening game of the season at the weekend, having returned from the World Cup in the USA.
His signing was only announced on Tuesday so it would be a surprise to see him thrown into the starting XI, maybe on the bench is more likely.
Fellow centre back Murillo has stepped up his return from injury and featured against Barcelona.
And welcome to the City Ground for what is Oliver Glasner's first time in charge of the home side in front of the Trent End.
Forest have won three, lost three and drawn one of their warm-up matches so far, but pre-season is never about reults, it's about getting fit and integrating patterns of play.
There's plenty of work to be done on both fronts for the Austrian and tonight we should see some of that.
Team news could be available around 6.30-6.45pm so you'll have it as soon as I do.