It’s not over yet (it hasn’t even started!)
04/08/04 | by Neil Heath

The greatest truth I've learnt about football is that it's not a science - it doesn't always go to plan. If it did, Greece wouldn't have won the European Championships, Crystal Palace wouldn't be in the Premiership and France wouldn't have left the 2002 World Cup without a win and even a goal. This is why we love the game so much.

Other sports don't throw up as many surprises as football does. You can usually predict the last four of the Rugby World Cup and you know that Tonga will undoubtedly lose to New Zealand. But with football the threat of the underdog is very real - that's why we bother watching games such as Liverpool v Yeovil in the FA Cup.

The pessimists have already written the script for Forest's 2004/05 season. And so accordingly we're going to struggle again and we won't possibly reach the play-offs. I wonder how Greece coach Otto Rehhagel and his players would have done at Euro 2004 with that attitude. They wouldn't have got through the group stages. 

It was said before the tournament Greece did not have any "world class players", and their odds suggested they'd be going home the same time as Latvia - yet they proved everyone wrong. They did it because they were a team - highly organised and prepared to fight for every ball. 

At Forest we know we're lacking a few players to beef up the squad and cover for injuries. But take away Andy Reid and what we do seem to have are positive players that are prepared to give it go and that's more important than having a team full of uncommitted superstars. 

We have a man in charge that kept Wimbledon in the Premiership for so long. He built a team from nothing with nothing and without him they plummeted into the First Division. 

We should be grateful that Kinnear's not chucking contracts at everyone paraded in front of him, he's ensuring we're not going to get stuck with another Brynjar Gunnarsson or Danny Sonner, the player has to be right. 

The team that starts the match against Wigan on Saturday will not be the finished article, but there's a long way to go and you simply cannot foresee what's going to happen. 

I seem to remember a debt-ridden, un-fancied club reaching the Division One play-offs with nine of their youth team players a few years back... Oh yeah, it was Forest! Funny how we forget what actually is possible.