They came, I saw, they conquered
04/03/05 | by James Scott-Warren

As a train pulled up at Nottingham station many of the people that flooded off it were relying on others going home rather depressed, being identified only by the colour they were dressed in, red or white. There was much talk of Spurs’ defender crisis, with King, Naybet, Gardner and Davenport all unavailable, such talk giving the Forest fans some dim sense of hope. However, by 9:50 that hope had been booted out the window, just had the Reds had been out of the cup.

Unbeaten in 6, coming off the back of two decent results (although this definition can be applied to anything that gives us points right now), with home advantage against a team we’d run surprisingly close in the first match. I didn’t expect to win. There was no way we could play that well again. The Londoners’ Premiership class would shine through and Mark Clattenburg would deliver another ‘classic’ performance. He was the referee in Spurs’ last minute ‘win’ against Manchester United and so would "owe them one", to quote the Spurs fan I would be keeping my distance from for a while. My biggest fear was not losing count of the score; his was keeping his girlfriend’s eyes away from Reto Ziegler.

The match, the first half at least, was far from pretty, probably typical for a match involving two teams so separated in the leagues. There were few noteworthy moments: a fingertip save from Gerrard, defined rather underwhelmingly by reviews as "decent"; an Evans shot just before half-time defined, equally stupidly, as "too close to Robinson" – it was a shot he stood more chance of eating than letting across his goal-line. There were also several moments where Mr Clattenburg’s footballing knowledge was called into question, several off-sides and would-be free-kicks ushered away – cynics read: trying to let Spurs win.

But, Spurs appeared as if they didn’t want to win. Kanoute’s shot was closer to endangering me than it was the goal. However, one thing was apparent – David Johnson had not turned up. While Taylor was at least trying there were times when Johnson’s jogging reminded me of the school child made to do PE even though they had a note, and not because of a cold either – more like a plastic leg.

The second half started more encouragingly, Forest closing the opposition down, forcing them sideways rather than forwards, even Johnson was improved, his plastic leg perhaps having been replaced by the springy ones athletes have. There was a rather joyous moment when one Spurs player was truly nutmeged to great cheers from three sides of the ground.

Unfortunately it was the remaining side that had the biggest cheer of the game when Pamarot put them in front (so much for the defender problem). Clattenburg’s knowledge again came under fire when after his pitch inspection he said it wouldn’t snow or rain during the game, yep that would explain the blizzard that swept the ground during the second half wouldn’t it, Mark. Dear lad, perhaps he always wanted to be a weather forecaster.

After the second goal  – another corner, another opportunity for pretty boy Ziegler to stick his rear end in the air much to the pleasure of my mate’s girlfriend, another defensive mistake – Clattenburg decided to watch the same match as the rest of us. Cynics read: he’d done his job and could now get on with his hobby of refereeing.

The train back wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, partly because everyone fell asleep and partly because the Spurs fan was out-numbered, thanks to the discovery of another Red from our Hall of Residence to help in any arguments as well as backing up the opinion of Clattenburg and the fact that the match lost a lot of promise as soon as Commons wasn’t playing with what I later found to be a calf strain, although we where split on whether Louis-Jean was worth the amount of paper it takes to write his name. The only down side was on the way to the station (down the road and cross at Hooters) I was accused of being a Spurs fan  –  in hindsight, as soon as I opened my mouth I might have been, thanks to the Southern accent.

However, some good things have come out of this: we can now concentrate on the league and performing the miracle needed to avoid relegation with tricky away games against Leicester and then Ipswich, who are once more doing inconsistency a fine service, the cup was a nice distraction and brought in needed revenue but points are more important. Secondly, after seeing him on Sky when we beat West Ham and on Wednesday, James Perch looks quite promising, with any luck a Premiership club won’t think the same (well we still have Morgan). And lastly Delia Smith has now become the laughing stock of football she deserves to be, thanks to the City Ground for the Delia re-mix, but truth be told we could have used a 12th man on the pitch (we might have won).

But things are still far from over, we are not officially condemned to League 1 yet, and with Commons hopefully returning against Leicester there is light. However our goal scoring lacks, well, goals and with King off to Leeds (search me and the Leeds fan as to why they want him) and Dobie’s scoring record far from one that will have us dancing with glee it’s hard to see us scoring the 2 or 3 goals to win a match that could be all important come the end of the season.