What you do to me 27/04/05 | by TrickyMatt

My last piece was penned before the crucial away fixture with Crewe and I was optimistic of our chances of staying up. What has happened in the meantime has been quite extraordinary. Firstly, there was the flurry of games which saw Forest lose not one, but many “must-win” games. And secondly, there was the ill-fated bar crawl by a number of our not-so esteemed players.

Before seeing the Reds take on Burnley, I did consider the exercise to be a complete waste of time. With a 1-0 win and other results going our way, I was once again examining the league table and other teams' fixture lists. I stopped and thought this utterly ridiculous, but only football fans think in this kind of way, blind optimism in the face of adversity – its true, they don’t deserve us.

For me it was the Coventry game where all hope was lost. Megson, stubborn in his ways, refused to act on Rambling Red advice and continued in his deployment of the doomed wing-back formation. It took a change to the conventional 4-4-2 before Forest recorded a shot on target... after 80 minutes. Yes, 80 minutes.

After the game, John McGovern accused Forest midfield players of lacking the will to get in the box. Absolute rubbish. The way Forest play the wing-back formation (often designed to accommodate the less-than-mobile Andy Melville) means the midfield three are ridiculously deep, covering not only the central areas, but wide areas too, which should be the domain of the wing-backs.

However, Melville and his fellow centre-halves always drag the wing-backs into conventional full-back positions meaning the midfielders effectively just run back and forth while the opposition pass it to one another in front of the Forest defence. I have had personal experience of this problem and, as a central midfielder, I can assure you it is absolute murder.

Fast-forward to Burnley. Not a prayer until we changed formation and, guess what, midfielders get in the box and suddenly we realise that Ross Gardner is playing and is capable of decent runs. Ten minutes later, Kris Commons, playing now as a midfielder, bursts in on the left side to drill home the winner. The Sunday Times accredited Forest’s second half transformation – if I can call it that – to the Forest fans' increased vocal backing. Absolute rubbish.

Through all of this, I have realised how your targets change dramatically over time. In 1993 it seemed to be absurd to be playing in the second tier of English football. Bathing in the Southend sunshine in August of that year brought it home to us all. Now, nearly 12 years on, fixtures against the likes of Sheffield United and Wolves all of a sudden seem so much more appealing as Yeovil and Scunthorpe fans rehearse the “you're not famous anymore” line. Forest have not only gone back to their pre-Clough days, but to a time in the early fifties when we played in Division Three South.

The way I’ve tried to cope with our current situation has been simply not to think about matters, as much as that is possible, of course. I can honestly say that following the Coventry defeat, I did not even glance at the league table until after the Burnley game. I thought this quite a feat. But then, a Kris Commons strike and a couple of late Stoke City goals at Gresty Road later, I am as angrily involved as ever. Nottingham Forest, that is what you do to me.