On Saturday a familiar name popped up on the Vidi Printer as David Johnson scored his fifth goal in six games for Burnley. Well, perhaps it was not such a familiar name for Forest fans as this goal means that Johno has scored as many for Burnley in just over a month as he managed in more than a year at Forest.

The stats are shocking. Having started 35 games (with eight games as a sub), Johnson only managed 5 goals. That makes an average of one goal every 7 games.

For Burnley he has almost helped himself to a goal a game, something I’m sure Paul Hart would give his right arm to have at Forest.

More alarmingly perhaps, the player that Forest signed for £3m 15 months ago, could now be released for next to nothing as Forest struggle to pay back the loans taken out to fund the transfer in the first place.

Financial implications aside, Johnson’s spectacular failure to make an impact at Forest has been one of the main points of concern for Forest this season. There is no doubting Johnson’s ability when you look at his record, not only at Burnley, but previous club Ipswich as well.

In 121 starts, he netted 55 league goals which is almost a 50% success rate. At Bury before, he got 22 goals from just over 80 starts - a good return for a young player. Even at Sheffield Wednesday who he was loaned to before Burnley, he got two goals from seven games.

So having proven himself at every club he has played for other than Forest, why has his City Ground career been such a disaster?

Many would lay the blame at the door of his team-mates, citing the lack of service as the reason behind his low scoring rate. Certainly, Burnley were scoring plenty of goals before Johnson arrived while Forest have struggled since (and before) he came to make chances for the forwards.

Ispwich were also free-scoring as they stormed into the Premiership two years ago, and having sold Johnson in January 2001, they still secured 5th place in the top flight.

But when compared to other Forest strikers who have had the same quality of service to feed off, Stern John and Marlon Harewood have both out-scored Johnson this season with as many, or less, games to do so in.

Tim Sparling from Hull Blues Ipswich Town site offers a different cause for DJ’s decline: “I believe it was his ego that cost him dearly. They season before we got promoted he was outspoken about the fact he wanted to leave Portman Road as he felt he was good enough for the Premiership.

“No-one came in for him so he shut up and stayed with Ipswich. In the mean time, we bought Marcus Stewart from Huddersfield who, it was clear for all to see, was a far better striker than DJ and so it proved. Our first season in the Premiership DJ couldn’t find the net and he got fed up with being on the bench.”

It would appear that this rejection put a big dent in Johnson’s confidence and his morale must have been low when he signed for Forest. At the time, Johnson was also openly critical of his price-tag and the belief that it was too high.

With low self-confidence, DJ was in no position to cope with the pressure of being the Forest saviour, not to mention the need for goals in our crucial promotion chase.

A bad start to his time with us set the tone for the rest of the season. At the end of the season we learned that DJ was playing with an injury but because of the need to find goals, David Platt had persisted in playing him.

Over the summer Johnson recovered somewhat, but a recurance in the early months of Paul Hart’s reign set him back again.

When Johnson finally got a run in the team, his confidence must have been at an all-time low. The fans were losing patience with him as, despite his obvious talent that he showed in rare glimpses, he appeared uninterested and lacklustre on the pitch.

It seems that the chance to start afresh with Burnley has given him a nice lust for the game and a good start has spawned new confidence.

The theory that confidence was the main reason behind Johnson’s miserable time at the City Ground is backed up by rumours that he received death threats concerning his choice of international team (DJ was approached by both Scotland and Wales, despite playing non-competitive matches for his native country) corresponding with the time his form dropped off at Ipswich.

But many would argue that a transfer to Forest would give him the perfect platform on which to re-establish his damaged reputation and recreated the scoring form that fired Town into the play-offs in 2000.

One thing is clear though - Paul Hart was obviously not one of Johnson’s biggest fans and despite giving him a fair chance of imposing himself on the first team, eventually decided that Johnson was not the right man for the job and would never fit into his plans.

As a result, we can now add Johnson to the already substantial list of strikers who have flopped at Forest, yet become stars elsewhere: Freedman, Shipperly, Campbell, Moore to name but a few.

But at least in this case, we are still in a position to benefit from Johnson’s new found form. The more goals he scores, the higher his value will become and the more we can cut our losses.

Thanks to Ralph Morris (www.prideofanglia.com) and Tim Sparling (www.hullblues.co.uk) for their help in researching this article.