lost that loving feeling - Hoping for (anything other than) the Bonus Ball

The lottery of the play-offs is always good fun. That’s because we are never involved in them and even though we have broken our duck, I quite liked it the way it was.

The play-offs really are the bonus ball. With the 46 regular games gone, we have got a few, but not enough of the right numbers. Now its back down to pot luck.

Some lucky sods are actually quite good at this “pot luck” thing of course, none more so than our favourite git, Neil Warnock. At this stage, he isn’t well placed though, in third place. If ever there’s been a kiss of death, that ought to be it, and who else would we have wanted to give it to? Do third place ever go up?

If Pardew gets the Manager of the Month (again), and Wolves as we know are almost guaranteed to cock it up (again), then we really ought to get through. Perverse isn’t it, but then again the first winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? was hardly a rocket scientist, was she? Not that they ever have rocket scientists. Just the occasional toff who knows a little too much!

Clearly, it’s not always the best that win. In fact it almost always isn’t. The play-offs are a perfect case study, an opportunity for any old bunch of lads to scrape through. Like Bradford, or Watford, or us.

Hence, we do have a very real chance of playing at Old Trafford next season. But having seen the early game highlights already today, would we really want to? Frankly, you can spare me the blushes!

Like every other fan, I believe Forest deserve to be a Premiership club. I am also very anxious for this to happen fairly soon. We still need extra revenue to balance the books properly, and the longer our loan to this division is extended the bigger the reality is that we are in a chronic decline.

I suppose what underpins the dilemma I have is whether the prize of promotion outweighs the cost of our almost inevitable subsequent relegation. After all, I think any fair-minded assessment would give the almighty Leicester a better chance of staying up than the Garibaldi.

When a team comprising of Kewell, Viduka, and Paul Robinson can go into the final game of the season still involved in a relegation battle, you know the league is going to be harsh on teams who can’t cut the mustard (which begs the question, why cut mustard, weird). Entering such a league takes proper preparations, and proper precautions. And of course, we’re talking money.

Money that we don’t have, you might suggest. Not that this has stopped others, including ourselves, before. Either way, a massive loan would be money we can’t afford to touch, unless we can guarantee survival. Fat chance of being able to guarantee that. I’d sooner put money on Johnny Vegas losing his double chin, in fact.

Not that a huge loan is the only hazard on this long, testing par 5. Bunkers include the inevitable wage increase. The huge increase in revenue will up costs, and as should be the case for an ambitious club; it’s a damn site easier to up costs, than to cut them.

So if we assume that we will get relegated, we can not ensure that the extra cash will wet the club’s beak. The players, the creditors and the stadium (which will be improved should we go up as I understand it) are the only sure winners.

Back in Division 1 now, and we have largely the same squad, better players for the experience, but now a little bit slower due the extra grand or five a week lining their pockets.

The stadium is much more spacious, with ideal locations for those cobwebs we have so cruelly removed this season to re-emerge.

And as our overdraft grows like elephantiasis infected scrotum, so the financial vultures start to reclaim the agenda, instead of the football that we used to play.

Used to because we will have to lose the services of Paul Hart, Dawson, Scimeca, Reid and Williams through big money transfers to real Premiership clubs and the inevitable progression in Hart’s career. In a now healthy financial state from these transfers, we start off where we were when we appointed David Platt, with a team that has as much chance of getting back up as a pensioner’s todger.

And so the bonus ball takes us all back to square one. Or does it? I forget do I not, in my foolish pessimism, the five-year plan? When do we get promoted in the five-year plan, may I ask? I fear that we are running ahead of schedule.

It would be better don’t you think, to avoid the bonus ball? Let's take it a bit slower and mature in the first division like the best of cheeses, until we stink of quality so much that the Premiership giants dare not eat us for fear of the effect it will have on their digestion.

Now that’s a plan. Financial health, which we don’t really have, and a squad full of talent, which we are working on, ought to be pre-requisites of a club promoted to the Premiership. My point is that we just are not ready, neigh worthy, of the Premiership.

Other than saving ourselves the humiliation, we would be saving ourselves having to do the whole “5-year-plan” shenanigan again. Achieving the goal of Premiership stability takes a bit more than a good season. It takes more than the signs of a budding team. It takes more than scraping into the play-off lottery and being unlucky enough to get through.

So, Mr Warnock, do me a favour. Save us scabs the bother of Premiership humiliation. We’ll leave that to you next season.