Posted December 28th, 2009by Rahoul Baruah4 Comments »
Another game undefeated for Billy’s men.
Five changes from the draw at Watford saw us line up, initially as a 4-4-2, but later as a 4-3-3 (Cohen moving to left midfield and Tyson joining Dex and Earnie up front).
Coventry set out to make life difficult for us and it worked – for most of the game, things were pretty dour. But two fantastic goals, pretty much out of nothing sealed yet another victory for us.
Points to note: both Earnie and Dexter were outstanding, Raddy got his own chant as he was substituted and McCleary, Lewis and Dele terrified the knackered Coventry players when they came on at the end. But it was the defence winning the plaudits today, with both Morgan and Wilson truly outstanding.
Posted November 29th, 2009by Rahoul Baruah1 Comment »
The biggest win of Billy Davies’ Forest career saw us line up in a 4-4-2 formation:
Campo
Gunter
Morgan
Wilson
Shorey
Anderson
McKenna
Majewski
McCleary
Blackstock
Earnshaw
Aston Villa loanee and potential January target Nicky Shorey slotted in at left-back and an injury to the Moose saw us drop the two-defensive-midfielder-five-man-midfield formation.
But while the first half was quite subdued, Majewski, in particular, took the game by the scruff of the neck to see us batter Donny in the second half.
Regular readers will know that I am not the manager’s biggest fan; my response is that I don’t need to like him as long as he does a decent job. However, in a day and age where every comment from players and managers is examined under a microscope, I think Billy Davies has come out with a corker, in an attempt to justify reducing the width of the pitch by a massive five metres:
The narrow pitch will help the situation for us this season. We have to be a better pressing team and we could not press the opposition effectively last season because the pitch was too wide.
It will help us to get forward quicker as well. Last season it took longer because the width of the pitch was so significant. It took time to pass the ball across it and work forwards.
Billy’s predecessor was understandably pilloried for talking gibberish at times, but this move is pretty much unforgiveable, and these are my reasons why:
Anyone who was at the Watford match will have seen that the lack of width only helped the team in yellow to close down the Reds, not the opposite way around.
It has been a long time since I have done any football training, but everyone knows that the ball moves quicker than players, so the idea that a wide pitch slows down attacks is frankly ridiculous. Note that a happy consequence of Arsenal’s move to The Emirates Stadium was that they could have a bigger pitch to play their particular brand of perfect football.
We have pacy wingers who like to run with the ball such as Tys, Ando and G-Man McCleary – narrowing the pitch means that they won’t have as much room to get around their full-back.
The amount of overhit crosses against West Brom and Watford suggests that the players aren’t especially comfortable with the new dimensions of the playing surface.
Anyway, it seems as though QPR old boys Dex and Campo will play on their old stomping ground tomorrow, and Chambo is likely to make a return – although Lewis and Casual Kelv will be out for six weeks. Bummer.
Just like Rahoul, I would like to apologise for the interruption to the usual service, we have obviously had the wrong type of snow at eighteensixtyfive towers recently. By now, you will all know the facts, so I merely want to sum up the memorable aspects of this match.
Number one: Paul Smith had a decent match, his distribution is still too slow, but he came for crosses and got them. Some people are pointing the finger at him for the Preston goal, but where was the marking? You can hardly miss Jon Parkin (he looks like a proper Sunday league bruiser), yet there seemed to be three Preston players queuing up and not a red shirt in sight.
Garath McCleary was outstanding in this match. Ando on the other wing was also good, but he doesn’t have the trickery or final product that Gaz can offer. A case in point was Ando’s excellent run down the wing, but with a powder-puff ball which Earnie could only head wide (despite the fact that the little man was imploring his wing-man to place it just in front of him on the ground).
Ozzy started nervously, which is understandable, and in the first fifteen to twenty minutes struggled to deal with the pace of the game (which, in light of his lack of playing time is also understandable). After that though, he looked a lot more comfortable; despite the fact that Villa fans are apparently rather unimpressed by the young man, I think that this shows the gulf between Premier League and Championship – he might not be good enough for Villa but there is no reason that he cannot do a job at this level.
Earnie may have been relatively expensive, but he could still prove to be one of the best value-for-money signing in this division this season. He had three chances and scored two of them. Alan Irvine was understandably narked about PNE’s defending, and if you have seen the comedy second goal, you will know why; to allow a five-foot-nothing striker to head home from eight yards is not impressive either – still, this is not our problem!
The substitutions – as Joe Heath was peeling off his training top, I was wondering why Joel Lynch had gone to right-back. As he started the slow trek across the pitch, I started to understand why, and it became increasingly clear as Lewis and Earnie made similar long walks afterwards; a cunning if rather transparent tactic. Combined with a surprisingly tolerant ref (who was rubbish for the other 89 minutes, and managed to find five minutes of stoppage time) and Matt Thornhill and Gaz McCleary’s sterling work by the Trent End Corner flag, Forest successfully saw out the match. Nice one.
Man of the match? Probably Wes, continuing his outstanding form of recent matches, and proving to be a worthy contender for the captain’s armband. However, Joel Lynch was (for the first time at the City Ground) absolutely brilliant, and his cross for the first goal was one of the best balls played in from either wing this season. Well done Joel, you may yet have a future at this club.
The manager: I was, of course, critical of Billy Davies’ rhetoric, but more pertinently the awful level and style of performance that had dogged us throughout February, leading to the nadir of the Derby match. The words do bother me, but of course I will be less bothered if the results go the right way – however, I was very pleased to see that, in absolutely awful weather, the style of play was much better. Good. Keep it up, Billy, and make me eat my words.
Before I start, I am not saying that Davies should be sacked or is not fit to manage this club – it is far too early to resort to such mean-spirited words…
Those of you who listened to the post-Derby podcast will have noticed that we weren’t happy, and that we were laying the blame at least partly at the manager’s door. There is much talk about the “acquisition committee”, and this has been started (at least partly) by the manager’s decision to publicly bemoan the lack of transfer activity.
We do desperately need new players, and I do agree that in an ideal world, the manager should be trusted to make the acquisitions himself. I can also understand why Messrs Doughty and Arthur are reluctant to relinquish the purse strings after poor signings made by Platt, Hart, Kinnear and Megson.
<RANT>The trouble I have with Billy Davies is that his world revolves around him, even down to referring to himself in the third person. The trouble I have is that he slags off the players in public one day, saying that they are not proud to wear the shirt, then after the Derby match states that it is not their fault as they are putting in lots of effort. He then says that he will sleep easy at night as it is not his fault, then he says that people should blame him because he is the manager. He basically states that there is little point turning up for the matches against teams in the top half of the table as we cannot compete. He, amazingly, even turns down the Megson-esque road of challenging the fans to pick a better team with the resources we have:
If there are any fans out there who can come up with a better formation, who can find the winning formula, they are welcome to come in and advise us.
Well Billy, I doubt you will read this, and I also doubt whether you would read it if I put it in an envelope and posted to you care of NFFC, but maybe you could play this team at Reading:
Smith
Moloney Morgan Chambers Heath
Cohen
Anderson McGugan McCleary
Earnshaw Tyson
See?
It’s 4-4-2, of sorts, rather than the unimpressive 5-3-2 of recent weeks.
Play a right back, rather than having a centre-half haplessly continuing out of position; you don’t have to worry about him; with the exception of one costly mistake against QPR, young Brendan has looked more than capable so far (as I write this, I wonder – is Moloney due a suspension this week? I cannot find it anywhere on the OS).
Breckin looked knackered last week, so give Luke Chambers a chance in his natural position – he has looked decent enough in the snatches that he has played there before.
Perch and Moose are out, so put our most industrious man in the heart of midfield.
Play Lewis, our most creative player, further up the pitch where he can hopefully see more of the ball and weave some magic.
Rather than complain about not having a left-winger, play a winger there!
Stop telling the defenders to hoof it up to a whippet and a terrier. Neither of them are target men, and against giant centre-halves, they are not going to get much change.
Of course, I don’t expect Ando or Earnie to last ninety minutes, so we may have to rely on the likes of Matt Thornhill and Joe Garner to come off the bench. The squad may be half-fit and short on numbers, but if you keep asking players to do stuff that they are not comfortable with, you are going to struggle to get results from them (and God knows, we saw enough of that under Calderwood). </RANT>
I do want Billy to succeed, really I do. For all the home truths that he is trying to state, I just don’t think his charm offensive has worked so far, on or off the pitch.
“Psycho! Psycho! Psycho!”, “Nigel Nigel, Nigel Nigel”, “Oh, Teddy Teddy, Teddy Teddy Teddy Teddy Sheringham”, “Ian Ian Ian Woan, Ian Woan Ian Woan”, “There’s only one Stevie Chettle”, “Norman, show us your bum”…
I started going to Forest in 1990, and one of the best rituals was the team running out to the Robin Hood them, and the Trent End regaling each player in turn with a little song.Those days seem to be long gone at the City Ground; although there are still cheers and cries of “You Reds!” as the team run out, the players are greeted by polite applause, rather than individual adulation. There are of course, the notable exceptions of Nathan Tyson and Robbie Earnshaw (who’s a Red, you know); this season’s choice as “fans’ favourite” fell to Lee Camp, but even he didn’t seem to get a song.
Notts County’s Gavin Strachan writes an excellent blog for the BBC, and this week he was writing about the “Get On” campaign to get fans writing new chants. While the advancement of English language skills is undoubtedly a worthy cause (although the Get On website ironically takes its time to state the purpose of the campaign), it got me thinking: why don’t we chant for our players anymore? Is it down to the invasion of the “prawn sandwich” brigade pricing out “real” fans? Or is it that Forest fans are just apathetic towards the players who have donned the red shirt during the painful demise of the club over the last ten years? Methinks the latter, but in that case, now that we are apparently on the up, why are there no chants for potential heroes such as Lewis, Joe Garner, Garath McCleary and Chris Cohen (well, none that I have heard, anyway)?
So, now is your chance. Submit a chant to the campaign, and once you have done that, submit it to us at eighteensixtyfive, either using the comments form, or by email if you are shy! If we like yours, we might even make some audio clips of it and include them on our podcasts.
Apologies for the fact that I haven’t had time to write a proper report yet. Hopefully I will be able to do so in the next 24 hours or so. Rahoul couldn’t make the match last night, so I thought that it might be fun to recount my text message updates that I sent to him:
8.24pm: Forest deservedly 1 down, then moved to 4-2-3-1 with McCleary on left, Tys on right and Davies behind Earnie. Great run & perfect pass by McCleary for the equaliser
8.26pm: Jeffers sent off got 2 footed tackle on Heath. Lucky not to break his leg
8.28pm: Until 5 mins ago it was like a bad performance under Colin
9.23pm: We haven’t played well but McGugan free kick headed in by Chambers. We can barely string 2 passes together tonight
9.40pm: 2-1 up against 10 men in injury time, and we’ve gone 5-3-2. Are you Colin in disguise?
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…
Colin Calderwood was caught speeding on his way home from the match last night. As the policeman approached his car, the bronzen one was heard to exclaim, “I’m sorry officer, I just wanted three points!”
Ipswich (4-4-1-1): R Wright; Volz, Naylor, McAuley, D Wright; Walters, MIller, Shumulikoski (Stead 77), Quinn (Haynes 90); Garvan; Counago (Lisbie 71). Subs not used: Supple, Bruce.
I usually try to play Devil’s Advocate when things are not going well. Hell, I even tried to give David Platt the benefit of the doubt (after the humiliation of Big Ron, anything seemed worth a go – how wrong was I?). Colin Calderwood is not the devil incarnate that many fans seem to portray him as, but despite a reasonable first-half showing, I left this match grateful for a point, and unsure as to how we are going to win a match in the foreseeable future (and it hurts me to write that).
Rahoul and I have commented recently about how Forest always look more likely to win when they get an early goal, and it was great to see that we scored one – except Garath McCleary was offside when he diverted it in. Bummer. Despite Walters’ long-range effort that spanked the home crossbar, Forest still looked more likely to score, although there was a paucity of real chances at both ends. In the end the deadlock was broken when a corner came out to McCleary on the far corner of the box, who looked up, saw the gap and rifled low into the net at the near post. A well-taken goal, and young Garath looked delighted, racing over to the dugout in what was presumably a show of support for his beleaguered boss.
There were two main talking points before the half was over: Jules was battered by his own keeper as Camp came out to take a cross, and eventually he was subbed just before half-time looking in some discomfort; secondly, Tys had a header ruled out for offside – from the far end, it looked as though he had run from behind his defender, but the flag did go up very early.
The second half was immediately disrupted as, from the kick-off, sub Joel Lynch banged his head and fell heavily, requiring a few minutes of treatment. I don’t know if this took the momentum away from Forest, but Ipswich were now in the ascendant, and the Reds conceded when Paul Anderson’s poor challenge on Alan Quinn conceded a penalty. No complaints from where I was sitting. Despite Camp getting a hand to it, Tommy Miller’s penalty found the bottom corner.
As has been reported before, the concession of a cheap goal early in the second half saw the confidence drain away (although play had never been less than a bit nervy), and if any team were going to win, it was Ipswich. Although there were not that many clear cut chances, it was all too easy for them to break through our midfield and defence. As the half wore on, Andy Andrew Cole was subbed for Lewis, prompting a 4-1-4-1 formation with Fletcher anchoring, which only showed up our lack of decent centre-forwards; Tys and Cole didn’t win a single thing in the air all match against their large centre-halves, and while Cole was not anonymous, his most telling contribution was an awful challenge for which he was deservedly booked – he certainly never got near the Ipswich goal. The final substitution was a bit mystifying, with McCleary removed in favour of Martin – Garath had gone off the boil a bit after a decent first half, but we all knew Anderson would struggle to last 90 minutes, and he pulled up towards the end. Was this CC’s reaction to the barracking he apparently received on Saturday?
I am struggling to pick a man of the match – on the first half, it would have been McCleary, but there was classic relegation form in the second, with everyone’s heads down and no-one looking like they wanted the ball. The new keeper did OK, one moment in the first half when he came for a cross and quickly bowled it out was particularly appreciated by the fans. Wes got in some brilliant last-ditch blocks, but aside from one sublime chipped pass towards the end, he continues to let himself down by pretending that he is any good on the ball. Chambers did OK in the first half and looks more comfortable in a 4-4-2 (Anderson is very quick and energetic and helped him out a lot), but was poor in the second, and it is surely too much to expect a centre-half to provide decent crosses into the opposition box.
As I have stated before, I am not a fan of swapping manager too frequently; when a new man comes in mid-season, it is usually a “sticking plaster”, where the brief is to halt the relegation form, and any medium- to long-term strategy goes out of the window – see the tenure of Joe Kinnear for details. The new man is usually gone within twelve months, with high severance payments, a significant turnover of players and ill-feeling at boardroom and dressing room level, as well as us fans who continue to bankroll all of this turmoil. However, most of the players can probably do a job at this level, although only a few look sophisticated enough to really make an impression; the worry I have is that CC and Kerslake seem to be running out of ideas. The manager admitted that the performance wasn’t great, but that the team “had hearts as big as buckets”; however, we should really be beating teams like Ipswich at home if we want to stay up, and after they equalised, that never looked likely.
Update: Jules has broken his collar bone, which presumably means that they will be attempting to extend Lynch’s loan period…
Following the news that Lewis McGugan has joined the walking wounded, there is a new gap in the team, which will be filled by either Garath McCleary or (more likely) Matt Thornhill. I personally wouldn’t mind seeing McCleary start, as it means that Chris Cohen would be able to drop into his more favoured midfield role, and it would even create the possibility of playing 4-4-2 (Martin and Cohen on the wings, McCleary and Earnshaw up front) – however, there is more chance of a cameraman coming home from the ladies’ beach volleyball complaining that he doesn’t like his job.
I have never been a fan of Watford, and not just because Forest rarely seem to beat them (I have, in fact, seen the Reds triumph both at the City Ground and at Vicarage Road). I just cannot remember ever seeing a Watford team play decent football (in fact I remarked the other day that they are “anti-football”), and on top of that they groundshare with Rugby League club Saracens, owned by enemy of the Forest, Nigel Wray. Hate is a strong word, but…
As it happens, I think that Saturday’s match could easily swing the way of the “Golden Boys” (sic – and that nickname does make me want to vomit). They have signed Gregorz Rasiak, and will therefore probably spend all their time hoofing the ball up to him, which means that any of Wes’ customary slip-ups could prove costly. However, they do have some guile as well, partly in the shape of City Ground treatment room reject Will Hoskins (pictured below); we will also need Perchio and the Moose to be on good form to counter the likes of John Eustace in the midfield, and I hope Luke Chambers doesn’t have an off-day, especially if Jobi McAnuff plays. Hopefully our strikeforce of, erm, Robert Earnshaw will be able to cause problems for the Shittu-less Hornets.
Team news update: It seems as though there is an outside chance of Nathan Tyson and Andy Andrew Cole playing some part in proceedings tomorrow. I am not holding my breath, but it would be excellent news. Less good news is the rumour that Kelvin Wilson may miss out – this is from a fan who claims to know the players, and his history of postings suggests that maybe he does know something we don’t.
We will be recording a podcast after the game, reflecting on the match and the reaction to the Swansea defeat. All being well, it should be available on this site Saturday evening, and those of you who have subscribed via iTunes should get it delivered straight to your “Podcasts” folder.
