lost that loving feeling

Ladies, gentlemen and Neil Shipperley, yes I am back from the wilderness in an ultimately futile attempt to win the LTLF writers' award this season. Mind you, if I cheat like I did last time… er, sorry. Wait a minute. After consultation with my lawyer I would like to retract that statement. I came second fairly. Well, sort of.

Anyway, yes. Zambia was fun. Not much football though. Except the Man U soap opera that’s on every Saturday lunchtime.

The Southern African football diet is distastefully twisted towards the “bigger” teams. Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool and whoever else is flavour of the month can guarantee their game being shown. Sad really. Mind you, I saw Preston play twice. Well, they were big once.

I also saw us beating Gillingham away, drawing with Baa-by away, and losing to Pompey, I think at home, but I was drunk. I also saw England lose to Oz and draw with Macedonia: woeful!

Sven won’t last it past Lent at this rate. When does Lent finish? OK, well maybe he will make it to the end of his contract in 2066, by which point Wayne Rooney will be deservedly retaining his place in the squad gunning for his 300th goal in his 3000th game. What a star that lad is.

Don’t believe the hype though. He is nowhere near being the next Pele, let alone the next Craig Westcarr. I suspect that he will end up somewhere between the two at the end of his career, although preferably not next to the other player he has been touted as resembling, Paul Gascoine, boozing up outside AA. George Best would be much classier company to keep.

On a more serious note, regarding alcohol abuse, congratulations to our Sir Brian on his plucky recovery recently. We lost one fan this season. Losing a legend would have been a similar tragedy.

Of course, as we all know the young lad who lost his life last year, lost it at the hands of a Burnley supporter. My next appointment will be at the City Ground, Easter Monday against the very same team.

Thank God we are not Millwall fans, or of the same mentality. Revenge is not what anyone wants, of course, but some football fans don’t always reach logical conclusions. With the same canny awareness of the bigger picture as a Harewood attempt to break the offside trap, some act like savages with no regard for sense and sensibility.

I hereby praise us all, us Reds, and thank the Trent for us not being on the Thames. Keep our heads.

Another issue that I feel deserves some airtime is the ridiculous amount of fixtures being played in such a short space of time.

Now I don’t like any of these silly “too many games in a season” arguments. With over 25 players in a squad, not to mention youth players, every team can realistically play over 50 games a season, without ruining young players, or burning out talent of older hands. In the case of the bigger clubs, with better training resources and better athletes, a 50 game season can be laughed at.

In many cases, only playing that many would constitute failure in cup competitions, or even financial peril in the case of Leeds United. Conversely, Forest has almost been lucky not to do too well in the cups, but then our squad has only got marginally more density than an eggy fart. With Mark Viduka and Danny Mills, one thinks more of breeze blocks and eggy turds.

But what infuriates me is why we have to have so many games, is such short time, and never on a bloody Saturday. Don’t let's water down the fixture list. No one wants to see Scottish-style leagues. Even the Scots have got bored of theirs. Let's just spread it a little more evenly. If I can spread marmalade, I am sure that the FA can arrange international friendlies, Sky, and postponements a little better.

And of course, after all this time away, how do I think that our team has progressed? Well, not badly it seems. When I left I had an irresponsible feeling of optimism. And be-Jesus I wasn’t wrong.

Bloody spot-on in fact. I hit the nail on the head, which hurt, but I did it. The team is working well, even without Prutton. The goals are flying in; even Jim B is in there. The defence is at times astute and reliable, as it was last season, despite the odd falter.

So, can we make it? No. Sheffield United, Reading, Wolves and Ipswich can all stifle us. Call me a non-believer, because I don’t believe we are even going to make the play-offs. Something seemed to be missing against Sheffield United, as it was against Leicester, and crucially, at home, we were lucky to draw with Wolves.

Well maybe not lucky, but we didn’t do ourselves many favours in the first half. Andy Reid and David Johnson gave us one, but Dawson had a shocker. I don’t expect to see him back in the side for a while.

The only hope Forest has of getting to the Premiership, and staying there, seems to be Darren Huckerby. If he comes back from injury firing on all cylinders and some more, than yes we can do it.

But let's just hark back a minute to the last time an average Forest side won promotion due to the efforts of one man, Van Hooijdonk. We were shameful. If the only way to get us up is to rely on one man, albeit with a passable support act including Reidy, Harewood and Johnson, I’m not sure it’s worth it.

When the cog goes missing, the engine seems to stop. That’s what happened against Leicester and Sheffield United, and it will happen in the Premiership unless we invest in more real quality. The problem is how on earth can we afford to progress?

So what is it to be? Will it be debt or lack of direction? Forest board, the catch 22 is up to you.

I will seek to further explore the potential risks in a further article, but for now, I tantalisingly leave you the question we have been asking all season, what good can promotion do us, if all we do is crash back down again as, it seems, we most surely would?