Like every football fan, I dream that my club will achieve great things.

I dream that Forest will:

• Win trophies; from the League Championship to Cups and maybe even the odd European honour.
• Have a team made up of talented stars and a manager that commands huge respect throughout the game.
• Play brilliant, attractive football that the pundits can’t get enough of.
• Be backed by a super-rich business man who will pump millions into massive transfers to bring the world’s best talent to the club.
• Attract huge, passionate crowds to their world class stadium.
• Beat Derby every time we play them.

Apart from the last one, I get the feeling I’m chasing rainbows. That said, dreams can come true. And I don’t have to look very far for evidence of this: in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Forest lived up to at least the first three items on my wish-list.

Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong generation and no matter how many ‘Glory Years’ videos I watch, or how many fans’-eye accounts I read, Forest’s history still seems like a distant dream, fading all the time.

With this in mind, my dreams have been slightly down-graded in order to increase the likelihood of me seeing them through.

I now dream Forest will:

• Regain Premiership status and, for once, stay there.
• Have a team made up of promising young players and a manager who puts the club first.
• Play decent, enjoyable football that earns praise from rival managers.
• Be backed by a reasonably rich business man who is determined to put the club back on its feet
• Attract impressive crowds to get behind the team at the wonderful City Ground.
• Play Derby next season.

Again, the last point is almost a certainty. But, as Gregory’s recent shot in the arm of Derby’s survival chances has proved, even this relatively modest set of desires can be very hard to gain.

At the start of the season I was feeling very optimistic about the chances of my dreams coming true: Forest were playing decent, enjoyable football and they were earning praise from rival managers.

Of course, we still do have a manager who puts the club first as no-one can fault his efforts this season. We also still have a team made up of promising young players, despite the sale of Jermaine Jenas.

We’re even pulling in good crowds, although I think ‘getting behind the team’ is a bit much to ask from the majority of the average City Ground crowd.

And I’m absolutely sure that Nigel Doughty is the man to lift this club out of the financial snake pit we currently find ourselves trapped in.

But recently things have gone wrong on the ‘decent, enjoyable football’ side of affairs. Forest have only won one of their last 10 games, in which they have scored a mere 7 goals. They have only conceded 8, but with 4 nil-nil draws in this time, it hardly adds up to ‘enjoyable’ footie.

And of course this has put pay to any hopes of getting back in the Premiership, for this season at least. It doesn’t look too promising for the next either, what with no money to replace the many players we’ve sold. But there’s always hope. After all, you gotta have a dream; if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?

And while we’re on the subject of dreams, I guess we have to mention nightmares. My nightmare is that I will have to reassess my wish-list yet again; that the aims of Forest will become:

• Maintaining Division One safety.
• Producing enough quality players to sell on to keep the club solvent.
• Scraping results in order to gain as many points as possible with no attention on how results are actually gained.
• Running the club on the borderline of bankruptcy; keeping the receivers at the door.
• Slashing ticket prices so that the ground isn’t full of empty seats.
• Hoping that Derby don’t beat us by too many goals in our next meeting.

Obviously I’m being daft now. Derby will never beat us, no matter how bad things get. But the other things are what clubs like Crewe, Grimsby and Stockport face every day. They are trapped in the living nightmare that being a small club above their level throws up.

I’m not denying any of these clubs their success - well done to them for having enough vision to achieve what they have done. But that is the grim reality they have and no amount of dreaming is going to change that.

I don’t think Forest will drop down to this level for one reason: Nigel Doughty.

That particular element of my hopes for Forest is in place and the others will come from it. Crewe, despite their talented players and manager, do not have the money to buy better players, let alone keep hold of the one’s they’ve got. They do not have a wealthy benefactor, nor do they have the fan base to attract big crowds through their gates.

Forest are fortunate that we do have these two things. But that does not guarantee success alone. The important thing about Forest is that the club’s management share my dream to see the club back in the Premiership, producing quality young stars and playing football the right way.

Without this it can go very wrong. Manchester City were, within years, reduced from dreaming of challenging for the Premiership title, to the living nightmare of Division Two. And the same thing could happen to Sheffield Wednesday this season.

But just the same as the nightmares can happen, dreams come true.

I don’t mean in the dappy way Forest’s wildest dreams came true in the fantasy world of 1977-1980. That was probably all make believe - maybe everyone drifted into a drug-induced delusional state and imagined the whole thing? It could happen.

No, what I mean is that in recent years dreams have come true for Ipswich, Sunderland, Charlton, Fulham to name but a few. And they can come true for Forest. Like I said, we do have the makings of a dream-fulfilling club. We have a decent set of players, fans that are still prepared to turn up and, perhaps most importantly, someone prepared to pump money into the club and help us along the way to that pot of gold.

It’s going to take time though. Clubs just don’t climb the ladder that quickly anymore. We all imagined Brian Clough, the Wombles of Wimbledon were Children’s TV characters and what Barnsley were doing in the Premiership a few years back is anyone’s guess.

But there are enough examples that we haven’t imagined, to persuade us that sometimes dreams can come true in the long run as long as you keep focused on them and don’t lose hope.

So when you start to feel down about the way this season is going, and the fact that on the face of things, the dream has never seemed further away, remember that someday we will live the dream. And if everything else isn’t enough to keep you reaching for the stars, Derby’s impending relegation should act as proof for us all that sometimes our deepest desires do become reality.