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.
Wes Morgan has astonishingly made it into the Championship Team of the Week. I say astonishingly not because he was bad, but simply because he has been eclipsed in recent weeks by the form of Messrs Gunter and Wilson, who have both upped their game impressively in recent weeks. No mention of Majewski or Gunter, who I thought were the outstanding performers on Saturday…
In other news, little Robbie Earnshaw is delighted to be in the team after weeks of frustration (and if he keeps scoring, surely he will keep getting minutes on the pitch), whereas Lewis McGugan is trying to handle the frustration of still being on the bench as an impact player, while Nigerian scouser big Dele Adebola finds himself in the same boat as his young midfield colleague.
Meanwhile Arron Davies and Matt Thornhill have been sent back from Brighton and Hove Albion as they are not getting in the team. I think we all suspect that Davies will move on at some point as he has never really been able to make an impact at Forest, but (like Vital Forest) I do hope that young Thornhill can pick up again.
Down the A46, Leicester City are looking forward to their trip to Nottingham – I didn’t know that they hadn’t beaten us at home in the League for 38 years! After we beat the bogey against Donny, let’s hope that this isn’t another record that gets broken – although Lewis says that we “fear no-one!“
Following a fairly successful appearance on BBC2 yesterday (doesn’t Gabby Logan look a bit like a lion?), the nation’s favourite broadcaster has offered us some tasty reaction to the Cardiff v Forest match.
Firstly, an audio interview with Lewis and Chrissy Cohen, and a few words from Billy lamenting the inability to take chances and the non-award of the penalty. A subsequent article allows Billy to continue to avoid talking about promotion and extol the virtues of a mid-table finish (yes please!).
Finally, BBC Online’s Football League man Paul Fletcher reviews the match and both teams’ promotion chances in his blog. He is certainly a better pundit than Messrs Claridge and Savage.
Posted October 18th, 2009by Rahoul BaruahNo Comments »
Sorry folks – the late kick off meant that we didn’t get chance to record a podcast after the game yesterday. So you’ll have to make do with a traditional match report.
On the way to the ground, Radio Nottingham announced the line up as a 4-5-1: Campo in goal, Gunter and Cohen at full back with Wes and Wilson in the middle. All the Ms in a midfield trio of Majewski, McKenna and Moussi, with Tyson and Anderson out wide and Dex as the lone striker. My immediate thought on hearing this was that it was one of those 4-5-1/4-3-3 things that never seems to work and Billy had his heart set on a point.
Luckily, I was wrong. It was much more of a 4-4-1-1, with Madge playing just behind Dex. And, for the first twenty minutes or so it really really worked. My brother commented that Madge could win this game for us single-handedly and this “in the hole” position suited him. We were making all the running and forcing saves from Harper.
But as the half went on, Newcastle became stronger. In particular, Smith (who was outstanding) and Nolan took control of the midfield and Carroll started to get the better of Morgan and Wilson with his niggly fouls and constant complaints to the referee. In fact, by about thirty minutes in I was looking to the bench. We were getting very little out wide and the two Newcastle players had the centre of the pitch sown up. But despite that, the chances were falling to us, which made me even more worried – was it to be another of “those days”? (Especially as Marlon was playing against us – old club syndrome and all).
Well, no. A nice bit of passing play resulted in a defence splitting pass for Dex to run onto. He took it around the keeper and shot agonisingly slowly into the back of their net. One nil up, just before half time. Newcastle looked angry and had us on the back-foot for the remaining couple of minutes before the whistle.
The second half started and Newcastle continued where they left off. Smith and Nolan bossed the midfield and their physical, niggly play took us out of the game. The game was really narrow – Tyson and Ando were switching flanks regularly but neither could really get in to the game – and when it went through the centre, Newcastle just snuffed out any of our threats.
By now, Madge had faded out of the game and was replaced by McGoldrick, who was outstanding. Not only did he support Dex but he was also involved in several amazing tackles in the centre of the park, snuffing out Newcastle attacks before they reached the back four.
The Geordies made a change, bringing on Gutierrez – this changed things slightly as now they had an outlet on the wings. And actually it probably worked in our favour as the centre became less congested. However, it has to be said that if they had anyone who could finish (sorry Marlon), they would have been three up in the second half. As it was, the corner flags and Row Z were in the most danger from their shots. But eventually they did get the ball in the back of the net – although the linesman ruled it out for offside. I, personally, thought it was good; the replay on the TV that night showed the official was correct.
Ando got clattered and was replaced by Lewis and I was fully expecting to see Dele Adebola replacing the now-knackered Blackstock. In fact Dele stripped off and was stood by the fourth official when Newcastle took Marlon off, replacing him with Ranger. Marlon left the field to a standing ovation from about half the Forest fans (which I was very pleased to see, as I still love him as a player) and the Forest coaching staff immediately called Adebola back to the bench. A few minutes later, McKenna was replaced by Garner, who promptly got his customary booking. I thought this was really interesting – Adebola was the obvious substitution – play it long and he can hold it up – very useful when you’ve been under the cosh for forty five minutes. But bringing Garner on instead suggested we wanted to play it and control the game more.
And that was probably that. Newcastle could feel aggrieved to come away with nothing, especially after their second half performance. But their finishing was woeful and their physical play was annoying (and very un-Calderwood).
For us, I think there were a few negatives. McKenna and Madge faded very quickly, suggesting a lack of fitness. Tyson wasn’t really in the game today (at one point he tried to take Enrique for pace and Enrique just strolled past him) and Camp looked very short of confidence (especially after the ref gave him a talking to following an incident with Carroll).
But the positives outweigh the negatives. Firstly, we beat the best side I’ve seen this season. Smith, Nolan, Enrique and Khizanishvili were the four best players on the pitch (Smith the best by far) yet we still took the three points. Despite extreme provocation from Carroll, Wes and Wilson dealt with their strike-force. Cohen proved why he is now first choice left-back with some excellent positional and passing play. The Mousse was outstanding, covering the entire pitch and rarely misplacing the ball when he had it. Ando worked really hard for little reward and David McGoldrick was a revelation. And Dexter, what can you say about our top-scorer? He just quietly goes about his business, with no fuss, getting the odd goal and working really hard for the team. What a man.
But the absolute best thing about yesterday was us. When Billy Davies had yet another rant about the negativity at the City Ground I just wanted him to shut up. But fair play to the man – when he speaks, even if it sounds like bollocks, it’s always for a reason, always designed to plant a seed. And today, even when we were struggling, the fans never turned on the players, barely even let their nerves filter through to the pitch. And it showed at the final whistle as the players, once again, made a point of thanking us for their support. So, it has to be said, that this was my best game of the season so far and truly Billy Davies’ victory.
Posted September 30th, 2009by Rahoul BaruahNo Comments »
The talk from the City Ground is all about our home form.
Lewis McGugan talks about his early return from injury – and how we now have the confidence to build an unbeaten home run, to match our away record.
Chris Gunter (who makes the Football League Team of the Week, thanks Saturday’s clean sheet and his goal) agrees and wants that run to start tonight against Scunthorpe. The Iron will be without Gary Hooper and David Mirfin and it seems likely that we will be missing little Robbie Earnshaw.
Oh, and one more thing. There was some football match in Wales last night.
Forest did well to come away with a point after a bit of a niggly, physical, hoofball performance (but it was an entertaining match).
Billy sprung a couple of surprises by leaving out Tys and Madge (paternity leave and injury respectively), but including Lynch, Lewis and the Mooooosssse in the squad; the team was:
Campo
Gunter Morgan Chambers Lynch
McKenna (c) Cohen
Garner McGoldrick Anderson
Blackstock
Subs were: McCleary for Garner, Adebola for Goldie and Lewis for Dexter. Smudger, Casual Kelv, Earnie and the Moose were the unlucky ones.
Rahoul couldn’t make it to Hillsborough, so the Maradona of the Midlands has kindly stepped in to assist with the podcast.
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.
This was bad. Really bad. A team that has ambitions of success will not want to lose more than two or three home matches in a season, and we have now lost two home matches in four days. Rahoul said on Saturday that we played like a team of strangers, but that was nothing compared to this match.
The easy criticism would be aimed at the back four, and this is what Billy Davies‘ post-match interview concentrated on. However, it was worse than that. Forest were disjointed at times on Saturday, but for most of tonight they could barely string two passes together. As I have commented so many times in the last year, when Forest try and pass it, they look good, but when they fail to do so they look like one of the worst teams in the division. There was no coherence anywhere in the team and the midfield and forwards failed to protect the “makeshift” back four.
As it happens, while the back four were not good, for most of the match Messrs Lynch and Morgan did the bread and butter stuff reasonably well (more on that later). I fear that Lynch may have “Chambers syndrome”, as he looks more comfortable at centre-half rather than at full-back where he will inevitably play on Saturday. Annoyingly, the people behind me were berating Chris Cohen at every opportunity, neatly ignoring the fact that he is literally the only player left at the club who can play left-back. Cohen did have one of the worst games I have seen him play, and I am not going to get into a debate about why there are no other full-backs at the club – that is for another time. Gunter at right-back was also poor, getting caught out a lot in defence and getting wound up all too easily.
The goals conceded: the first one was not so good, Smith got to the bye-line all too easily, and Graham had an almost free header at the far stick. The second was also poor, a Forest head flicked it on and Smith had a free header, and despite Campo’s fine efforts in pushing the ball onto the post, the Watford players were almost queuing up to bang it home. No-one closed Smith for the third (and I thought Campo was rather slow in getting down to attempt the save), and Wes blotted his copybook by completely failing to challenge for the ball for the last goal. Not good. Incidentally, the speculation is that Tommy Smith was playing his last game for Watford last night – everything creative they did rolled through him and he would be a big loss for them.
By way of compensation, the goals scored were both rather tidy: Dex controlled McKenna’s chip well on his chest and showed good persistence to poke home, and Adebola showed good movement to slot home after some fine interplay with Goldie. There were a couple of other decent chances, notably Ando forcing a save from Loach after a mix up in the Watford defence, and Earnie doing likewise in the first half before screwing a half-chance wide (he missed another at the death as well, but that’s just the way that things were going by then).
Normally, after conceding four goals at home, there are no grounds for blaming the officials (and we played badly pretty much all match, with the exception of first half stoppage time). However, it cannot be denied that the referee and linesman missing/ignoring Mike Williamson’s blatant and deliberate handball towards the end of the first half had some impact, as Earnie would have been clean through and therefore the ref would have had no choice but to brandish the red card. As it was, everyone in the ground saw it, except for him (or, he chose to ignore it to save himself a difficult decision – you choose). To me, this was as incompetent as the Crystal Palace goal at the weekend. But despite Williamson scoring Watford’s second goal, it really is impossible to say if it had any bearing on the result.
I texted Rahoul to say that Paul McKenna was once again brilliant, and as soon as I did that, the skipper faded along with the rest of the team. Dex was the only player who acquitted himself with any credit, and he was replaced by Adebola with fifteen minutes to go. Big D looked much happier in a 4-4-2, although his first action was to not mark Williamson for the second Watford goal, and his second action was to get booked following an aerial challenge on the same Watford man (who had a busy night).
Billy Davies said that he saw this coming, although as usual there was no admission of culpability on his part. The fact that none of the team seem to be able to pass to another player in red suggests that there is something lacking that the manager and coaching staff could be working on, does it not? Still, it would be easy to launch into a kneejerk criticism of players and management, and it is still early on in the season. I would imagine that Saturday would see the return of Chambers at centre-half, with Lynch moving to left-back and Cohen replacing the crocked Lewis McGugan in the centre of the park (although Raddy Majewski at least got himself more involved than his anonymous showing on Saturday). If nothing else, it will add a different dynamic to the back four and midfield, and as usual I expect the strikers to be rotated. Goldie played on the right when he came on, and although he didn’t get much chance to get involved in the action, he did clear one off the line before his assist for Big D. I expect Earnie to revert to the bench against QPR’s big centre halves, but also because he didn’t look sharp tonight.
There is much to improve upon; this excellent analysis by Watford fansite BHappy sums it up for me:
Competent but impotent and tetchy, not abetted by a notoriously impatient home support there’s quite a lot wrong with [Forest] despite prodigious summer outlay …. You don’t equalise on half time at home to roars of acclaim, dominate most of the second half and still lose by two goals.
Posted April 19th, 2009by Rahoul Baruah1 Comment »
Billy chooses what, on paper, looks like a 4-4-2 but actually turns into a 4-5-1 for this “must-win” home game.
Smith in goal, with a back-four of Gunther, Morgan, Chambers and Perchio. In midfield, Anderson, McGugan, Cohen, Osbourne and Garner and Dexter Blackstock leading the line.
We forgot to mention it during the actual podcast, but we give the man of the match award to Luke Chambers. It was pretty close run, between McCleary, Blackstock, Chambers and maybe Cohen – but given the torrid season Chambers has had, this game (where he played in his favoured position for the first time) showed what a decent player he can be.
It seems as though a lot has happened since Forest had a good week with victories against Reading and Preston and a creditable draw against diving Swansea. Needless to say, we need as many points as we can get, but with the back line and keeper looking more and more jittery every week, and the fatboy drunkards (allegedly) still populating our team, confidence is pretty low.
Assuming that we still have a dearth of fit centre-backs, I don’t see why Perchio or Moloney cannot play right-back and Chambers at centre-half. Lewis may be a tubby p*sshead (again, allegedly), but he is our most creative player and, like it or loathe it, we could do with his spark in the middle of the park.
I spoke to Wolves fan Matt Langham about this weekend’s match:
1865: So, how’s your season going?
M: It goes without saying that anyone would want to be in our position but, remarkably, there’s still an element of disaffection among the Wolves fans, with some feeling that Mick is intransigent in terms of team selection and only picks his “favourites”, and others that we should have the title sewn up by now. Most fans are level headed though; they realise that the run-in is going to be a nervous affair and are increasingly showing signs of unconditional support for the team.
1865: Who is the Wolves danger man?
M: Some of our most effective players have lost form since Christmas – before Saturday Chris Iwelumo hadn’t found the net in 17 games, Michael Kightly has been underperforming by his high standards of late, Matt Jarvis has struggled due to a niggling injury. One player who has been consistently excellent is Sylvan Ebanks-Blake – he’s quick, strong, good under pressure, committed and scores different types of goals.
1865: Who would win in a fight: Mick McCarthy or Billy Davies?
M: Mick every time! I think both would and have struggled with the exacting demands of the Premiership though.
1865: Will Wolves go up? As champions?
M: Well we finally capitalised on Reading dropping points last weekend which will give our players a morale boost and now you’d have to think that the 10 point gap is too much for them to make up. I’m honestly not bothered about winning the League as long as we make it, though having topped the table for so long it would be nice!
1865: Do you think that Forest will get relegated?
M: I really hope not, but think it’s going to be tight. Charlton are gone, but everyone up to Doncaster in 14th have cause to be looking over their shoulders. Another good run should see you safe and hopefully we’ll do our bit by beating Barnsley and Southampton for you!
1865: Finally, what’s your score prediction for Saturday?
M: I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion by any means. Forest will be smarting after their thumping at Burnley and many of their players will also have a point to prove following the outcome of the reverse fixture in August. Still, I think a scrappy 1-0 win to Wolves with Ebanks-Blake on the scoresheet.
I personally find it hard to see anything other than a comfortable win for the men in Gold and Black, so let’s hope that Billy and the boys can surprise everyone (a la Reading) this weekend. Thanks to Matt for taking the time to speak to us and good luck to Wolves after Saturday!
