Having reported the other night on how I couldn’t see how we would get a win, Saturday’s match was both a fillip and a kick in the nads teeth. It was good, because it proved to idiots like me that playing decent football can get you out of trouble, and yet it was bad because we remain rooted to the foot of the table.
In yesterday’s podcast, Rahoul and I couldn’t help but comment that Forest played well, but also that there was a nagging suspicion that if we didn’t score in the first 45, we would be in serious danger of losing. No surprises there – I suspect that everyone in the City Ground had that nagging doubt.
Despite Joe Garner’s heroics, ostensibly as a lone striker, but in reality with Lewis pushing up alongside him, the ball just wouldn’t go in. Garner hit the post after great work from McCleary, Lewis had an unsuccessful effort, and Chris Cohen had a 20-yarder saved (fairly comfortably, in all honesty). Garath McCleary, not content with being the most creative player on the park, also had a go himself, spanking it narrowly wide with his left foot, before James Perch made a great burst forward only to be denied by a slight deflection. When the whistle blew, everyone was wondering how Forest weren’t at least two or three goals to the good.
Half-time saw the unusual sight of a sub peeling off his tracksuit and warming up, and sure enough, Nathan Tyson took the place of Paul Anderson on the wing; Ando had apparently complained of tightness, so best not to risk it. Cardiff also made a substitution (their second of the game), with captain Darren Purse (whom we commented on in the podcast) being withdrawn. Tys played down the left, and generally looked like you would expect – a forward who hasn’t scored in a long time.
As usual these days, Forest were undone by a cheap goal conceded not long after the interval. Lewis made a necessary but clumsy challenge on Steve McPhail, and Ross McCormack made no mistake from twelve yards.
According to the precis in ITV’s “The Championship“, that was it – game over, and Cardiff were unlucky not to win by more. What lazy reporting: it neatly ignores the fact that although Forest were shell-shocked and poor for a good twenty minutes, they did come back into the match. McCleary had come agonisingly close; some decent work from Lewis gave him a shooting opportunity which went millimetres wide of the far post. Garner had, despite his best efforts, become peripheral and was replaced by Earnie, with Lewis dropping a bit deeper and Tys moving a bit further forward. The little man almost reaped quick rewards, with a one-on-one effort which Heaton in the Cardiff goal diverted around the far post. I think it was at this point (and despite a speculative volley from Earnie) that we realised that it wasn’t going to happen. There was still time for a rare decent cross from Tys to just elude Cohen at the back stick, thanks to an intervention from the Cardiff full-back.
A word on the crowd: we commented on the podcast that the Cardiff fans were great, and I have to confess that I did not hear the unsavoury chanting that came from the Lower Bridgford; I did hear unsavoury taunts from the A Block towards Dave Jones, but it was also clear that something had happened to prompt the abuse (I have read elsewhere that he directed a “Nescafe handshake” towards the Reds’ fans, rather than the “thumbs down” indicated on a Cardiff site). So credit to the away support for creating so much noise, less so for the nature of the noise.
It would also be remiss of me to ignore the telephone comments broadcast on Radio Nottingham when we were battling through the traffic on Wilford Lane: so many of them were “I have just listened to the match, and Calderwood has to go…”. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if I was at work and walked into another department’s team meeting and told them that they were doing X, Y and Z wrong, they would quite rightly tell me to piss off. If you didn’t go, you wouldn’t know!
To the CC-baiters: he couldn’t have done much more today, he picked a decent line-up, made the substitutions that he had to, and cannot be blamed for the profligacy in front of goal. I have said before that I don’t regard him as a saint, but he did little wrong in this match.
Winners and losers in the Forest team? Well, Garner certainly adds a welcome dimension to our play – despite not being the biggest, he is strong (held off Purse for most of the first half, prompting the Cardiff skipper to resort to foul means on several occasions), and he can hold the ball up well. However, a lot of players tend to get through their first game after injury on adrenaline, so I hope that he can sustain such a level of performance. Many (myself included) commented that the prospect of him linking with Earnie could significantly increase our chances of actually scoring once in a while. At the back, Wes had his best game in a long while, although his defensive partner “Casual Kelv” was poor again today and Luke Chambers (playing as a centre-half!) was perfectly competent and immediately looked more effective than his hapless skipper. Lewis was brilliant, but then disappeared for half-an-hour, and the decision tomove him back to a more conventional centre-mid position almost paid dividends as he got much more involved again. However, MOTM goes to the brilliant Garath McCleary, playing without fear and looking most likely to make things happen. The lad looked absolutely shattered at full-time.
As if the current position was not bad enough, the next few weeks see a horrid sequence of fixtures – we never win at Selhurst Park and are all dreading the trip to Pride Park, followed not long after by high-flying Birmingham City. However, a few weeks ago, I think we would have feared being the team against whom Derby break their duck, and now the tables are turned; in many senses, there is nothing left to lose, and if they play as well as they did this weekend, at least there is a shred of hope…
