lost that loving feeling - Back to the old routine

Yesterday, I saw the New Forest. Unfortunately it was the New Forest, Hampshire. With regard to football, it was the 'same old Forest' as Paul Hart and his lads set about the important business of putting Forest fans through 10 months of frustration and anxiety.

They certainly did a good job with a performance of the lowest calibre. In the first half we barely troubled Pompey's goal and allowed the home side to beat our defence with two lapses in concentration. In the second half, after a change of formation by the manager, Forest improved slightly but still looked short of ideas and even allowed Portsmouth a few shots at goal which, had Darren Ward not been on sharp form, could have increased their lead.

A two-nil defeat on opening day is not the end of the world, despite having travelled just about as far as it is possible to travel to see a Forest game. It could have been worse: we could be Millwall and have just lost six-nil at home to Rotherham (ha!).

Neither should we be surprised. After all, the amount of poor performances and defeats we've had over the past four years should have got us used to this kind of thing by now. Did we really expect anything different this season? Was the addition of Des Walker and Marcus Hall really going to solve our problem? A couple of defenders, no matter how good, were not going to provide the much-needed spark of creativity in midfield.

Maybe the arrival of Eion Jess in Wednesday's game will give us that spark - hopefully. But he wasn't playing today, so why did we expect things to be different, rather than the usual, dull rubbish we've become accustomed to?

Well our pre-season routine certainly helped fuel the usual August optimism. We scored 11 goals in four games, three of which were against Premiership Newcastle. Something about that might have persuaded us that we were capable of producing quality attacking football after all.

But the Forest that played against Newcastle in that soon-to-be-forgotten victory, and the Forest that played yesterday at Fratton Park were virtually unrecognisable from each other.

Against Newcastle, Forest playing a 4-3-3 system in which Lester floated around behind the two forwards and it worked. It worked against Mansfield, Newcastle and Plymouth. It was exciting and it was effective.

So why on earth, I find myself asking with no answers yet delivered, did Paul Hart not use this system against Portsmouth? Why did he elect for a 4-5-1 formation, with DJ the only recognised forward on the pitch, backed up by seven players whose preferred position is in defence? It was negative. It was dull and counter-productive, and it ultimately led to Forest's downfall.

It was only when Hart changed back to 4-3-3 at half-time that Forest produced football of any quality, and by then it was too late.

Hart tried the 4-5-1 system against Boston United in the final friendly game on Wednesday, and by all accounts it wasn't particularly effective. So why did he decide that that formation would be better than the one which helped us beat Newcastle United?

My hopes for this season were not that Forest would finish as League Champions, or even that we would reach the play-offs - that would be unrealistic and put unnecessary pressure on the players and manager. All I wanted, and expected to see, was noticeable signs of improvement, and signs that some of the lessons dealt out to us last season were being learned. At least then it would prove that Forest were heading in the right direction.

But never mind lessons from last season, Hart doesn't even seem to have learned lessons from last week! For the first time since he took over as manager just over a year ago, I find myself asking serious questions of Hart's ability as manager.

Everyone who had followed the Reds down to Portsmouth yesterday could see that the system wasn't working; they could see that David Johnson, the shortest man on the pitch, even with his new hair, is the last person you want to put up front as the lone striker, especially when you have Marlon Harewood on the bench. Everyone that is, apart from Hart.

Perhaps he was hoping to change things at half-time when it was still one-nil. Then we would have been in with a shot at getting something out of the day. But the second goal sunk us like HMS Nottingham stuck on a rock in the far south.

Still, it's only the first game of the season and Hart has plenty of time to prove himself. Hopefully we've got our worst performance out of the way early on (I hope that was our worst performance - any worse than that and I'll jump off Trent Bridge with an elastic band round my ankles).

And if all else fails, at least we're not Millwall - stuck at the bottom of the league having just lost six-nil to Rotherham (ha again!). Oh well, back to the old routine...