'It is unfortunate' - Sean Dyche laments Nottingham Forest injury as six players to miss Everton clash

Sean Dyche has lamented Nottingham Forest striker Chris Wood being forced to have surgery - ruling him out of their upcoming game against Everton.

Wood plundered 20 goals for Forest last season to help them finish seventh in the Premier League and qualify for the Europa League. But the striker has had fitness problems this campaign, limiting him to score three times in eight games, and has not played since October.

Forest are 17th in the table, five points above the relegation zone, and they’ll be hoping to put further daylight between themselves and 18th-placed West Ham United. They were defeated 2-1 by Manchester City in the previous game and now turn their attention to facing Everton at the City Ground on Tuesday.

On Wood’s injury, Forest boss Dyche said via the Nottingham Post: “He has had an operation, at the end of a period of trying to settle it down. It is unfortunate. We had a lot of specialist opinion to try to get him through naturally. But they have decided it is time to go and do it.

“It is a version of a cartilage op. It certainly won’t be days, obviously. We are hoping it will be weeks. We will have to wait and see how it settles. The signs were good from the surgical point of view.

“I don’t like throwing timescales about because of potential disruption on the way back to fitness. We are hoping it is smooth pathway, but sometimes it isn’t. We will just have to wait and see.”

Forest are set to be without six players when they face Everton, who were held to a 0-0 draw at Burnley on Saturday. Along with Wood, Ola Aina, Ryan Yates (both hamstring) and Dan Ndoye (unspecified) have been ruled out, while Ibrahim Sangare and Willy Boly are at the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) representing Ivory Coast.

Everton team news

Everton are hopeful they will have Jack Grealish back after he missed out against Burnley because of a virus. It meant that the Toffees were without five keys players at Turf Moor, with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Jarrad Branthwaite (both hamstring) sidelined while Iliman Ndiaye and Idrissa Gana Gueye are on AFCON duty with Senegal.

After the Burnley draw, Everton manager Moyes told evertontv: “[It's] not a particularly good [result], but you take a point sometimes when you don't play well and we didn't play well enough today to earn more than that. That's for sure.

“We always prepare, try to get the things right. I don't think, over the years, Burnley have ever been an easy team to beat here at Turf Moor. They picked up a really good result against Bournemouth last week when they got a good draw down there.

“I think they came into it with a bit more confidence. We just didn't really get out of the box right from the start. It wasn't to say that we didn't have a few opportunities to score and the keeper made a few saves.

“We had one or two chances, but in the end, we gave up too much today and didn't play well enough. We didn't have loads of opportunities, but look, I didn't think Burnley had many opportunities. It opened up a little bit more in the second half, but the first half there were very few chances for both teams.”

Everton earned a 3-0 win over Forest when the two sides met at Hill Dickinson Stadium earlier this month.