Preparation makes perfect
22/07/05 | by Pete Brooksbank

You hear it all the time: pre-season is irrelevant, meaningless, just a good work-out. It is, after all, cricket season, and with the League football some weeks distant it makes no sense to get too involved with the on-field activity. Tell that to Nottingham Forest fans.

Following their wretched relegation to League One last season, fans and officials needed to blame someone, anything. The obvious fall guy, Joe Kinnear, seemed a soft target for those willing to overlook his attitude towards the media. He certainly played his part, yes, but Megson wasn’t able to turn it around and Forest hardly played any better under his leadership.

There was a fundamental weakness throughout the squad that no manager, however bad, could hope to instill. Instead, Forest's tour of the United States in the summer of 2004 was made the scapegoat, perhaps indicating a sea change in the annual relegation blame-game played out at the unlucky twelve professional clubs up and down the country. If all else fails, blame it on pre-season. 

Apart from the injuries, the cash problems and the priceless Kinnear sound bites, what was glaringly obvious to the despairing masses at the City Ground was that the players were hopelessly, needlessly unfit. Players tottered sluggishly about the pitch, drank themselves stupid and, it now emerges, gorged themselves on, well, pastry. In other words, the players were fat and were fed a steady diet of Gregg's.

The match fitness was lost sometime in the summer of 2004 and disappeared for good. Blame it on the tour! Why not? Blame it on inadequate training facilities, dreadful pitches; in short, a 3,000 mile trek into hopeless oblivion. Make no mistake, the tour was no Vodaphone Cup: it was a half-hearted jaunt to an aloof nation. Jaded and jet-lagged, Forest got off to a poor start and never recovered.

Which leaves us with an intriguing situation this year. With so much work to do, and so much expected, Gary Megson must be acutely aware that this year his pre-season must define the coming months for Forest. If the ‘disastrous’ USA trip defined the spectacular fall from the Championship, what will this year bring? Forest aren’t merely serious about promotion this time, and neither are their fans – Nottingham demands a single season stay at this level. Megson has wisely invested in experience rather than youth. What is clear is that he isn’t building for tomorrow. He’s building for today, and an immediate return to the Championship.

With a low key overseas tour under their belts, a trip up the road to an ambitious League Two outfit in the shape of Boston United is, in all honesty, just the kind of encounter the Reds need. The Pilgrims don’t play pretty football, but they do represent the new reality in which Forest operate. The game is followed by trips to Exeter and Torquay. No big names. No Middlesbrough. No Spurs. No DC United. Just bread and butter teams, hard working outfits similar to those Forest are going to face this season, teams likely to play football where God failed to plant grass.

Megson knows that, if his club are to come to terms with their new place in the pyramid, there’s no point exposing them to glamour ties. It’s a warning shot from the boss: "This is our place now, we must win this division or we’ll be staying here for years." If, as some believe, Forest’s fate was sealed by August last year, maybe success depends on the coming days more than the average fan thinks. More than ever, and especially for Forest, pre-season counts. Forest cannot get it wrong.