Nottingham Forest Vs. Swansea City, 2011 nPower Championship Playoffs: 0-0 Halftime

Though it’s currently 0-0, it’s been an extremely eventful and downright thrilling opening 45 minutes to the 2011 nPower Championship Playoffs semifinal tie between Nottingham Forest and Swansea City. The game already has a red card, and we’ve seen some fantastic goalkeeping on both ends, along with some solid attacking going both ways.

Neil Taylor was the man sent off, bringing Swansea City down to 10 men in less than two minutes. Taylor made the tackle 52 seconds in, putting his cleats high into the quad of Lewis McGugan, and Mike Dean had no choice but to show the defender the red card less than 90 seconds into the game. Swansea responded by replacing attacking midfielder/second striker Stephen Dobbie with defender Garry Monk, leaving their two central midfielders to perform more responsibilities on both offense and defense.

Despite going down to 10 men, Swansea have been the much more aggressive side. Leon Britton and Joe Allen have done brilliantly in the middle, Scott Sinclair and Nathan Dyer have looked dangerous out wide, and lone striker Fabio Borini has terrorized the Forest defense with his aerial ability and great movement off the ball. Lee Camp has been forced into four saves, and he’s made all of them in brilliant fashion.

However, despite Swansea’s superiority, Forest have unsurprisingly created some chances of their own. The best came in the 36th minute, when Dorus De Vries made a great save on a hard Robert Earnshaw shot, assisted by a Kris Boyd cross.

Forest, having 11 men and playing most of the first half on the back foot, will likely make some adjustments and try to dominate the second half.