Were you watching, Andy Reid?
22/02/05 | by Elliott Stanley

“Forest to win 1-0 and super Gaz to get the goal – 125/1?! We’ll have a bit of that” was the unanimous verdict after scouring the betting coupon underneath White Hart Lane’s South Stand. We were, of course, just having a speculative punt on just about the only possibility involving a Forest victory we could imagine. To ‘spread’ our bets we also combined Kris Commons with a slender Forest victory for even more appealing odds of 200/1. And the only thing more shocking than the fact that Spurs were ranked at only 9/1 to beat us 4-0, was the performance of the Forest team!

Going to North London without a hope in hell, the once great club, now doomed to League One, Forest had nothing to lose. But by 4:55pm, the ‘Great Escape’, although now littered with further obstacles following Coventry’s impromptu victory on Saturday, looked slightly more likely than it did at 3pm. I have since read some reports suggesting that Spurs were "all over" us and that our defending was "woeful". Ignore such reports as they are absolute rubbish. Spurs had chances, but the likes of Jermain Defoe and Freddie Kanoute get chances every week in the Premiership – that does not mean to say the teams whom they play against were woeful, it’s just the nature of our attacking style in this country. 

I need not harp on about Kris Commons for too long as anyone at the game will not need any persuading that this guy possesses massive talent. But what I will say is that the chants of "Commons is better than Reidy" may prove to be absolutely right. Coupled with Commons' evident desire to do well for Nottingham Forest, his natural ability made him the star of the show. Had he directed his shot a yard further right or left after beating half the Spurs side we would have had our first ‘Goal of the Month’ winner from down Trentside for many a season.

Special mention must also go to Darryl Powell who never stopped battling and had a superb debut – he will no doubt be a major tool in our fight to beat the drop. Paul Evans put in his best performance for a while and John Curtis and Andy Melville continue to impress with thoroughly professional showings. We still lack a goal-scorer upfront – our struggle to find one is well documented and action is needed very soon before we run out of games. 

Without going into great detail about the match itself, my main conclusion from the game is that one of two things happened between the Rotherham game and Sunday. Either a) the players were buoyed by the occasion and decided to ‘turn it on’ for the FA Cup in front of a full stadium of 35,000, or or b) Gary Megson’s wizardry is starting to cast a spell over the club. The players are actually responding to the new boss, they want to play for the club and the pride and passion is returning to Nottingham Forest. Let’s hope it’s the latter and that come Thursday morning the gap is down to six points with two games in hand! The Great Escape is ON!