lost that loving feeling

I found a stack of CDs that I hadn’t listened to for a while the other night and one track on one of them really stood out to me. It was ‘My Oh My’ from White Ladder by David Gray. That song reminded me so much of Forest, especially the opening verse which goes: “What on earth is going on in my heart / Has it turned as cold as stone / Seems these days I don't feel anything / Less it cuts me right down to the bone”.

To me the song is about being disappointed by something and fighting to go on, but as the days pass it gets even harder to go on. It is very similar to how I feel about Forest this season. Before the season started I had optimism inside me and, although I wasn’t overly confident about automatic promotion, I thought a play-off place was a realistic aim. But after seven games we are lying in the relegation zone of the 3rd tier of English Football.

I was actually looking forward to this season before it started, but now I dread the thought of going down to the City Ground to watch us play football in the clouds. It’s horrible seeing your team do badly in any division, but when it’s a division you have never been lower than, it is especially worrying.

The more games we play, the more disquieting it gets and for the third season on the trot we have expected much in the way of promotion pushes but have found ourselves languishing at the bottom end of the table. Surely that can’t be the fault of three different managers and we have had virtually three different teams in those three seasons as well.

I have never been one of Megson’s biggest fans and I won’t ever be as I don’t agree with his footballing ideals and his attitude to players. However, in comparison to many people I currently appear to be one of his strongest supporters. I don’t want the club to get rid of Megson at the moment for the main reason that the club needs some stability at the moment and bringing in another manager could only jeopardise things more.

However, I would like Megson to try and play some half-decent football and not hoofs to Johnson who ironically is one of the smallest players on the football pitch. I want to see players playing in their proper positions and the team to play a 4-4-2. This surely isn’t so hard to do, is it?

In this division I feel we will succeed if we play a simple but efficient football game, passing it around and building up play. If we keep trying to play football in the sky, I fear we will get no where this season and could even have another relegation struggle on our hands which will make the pain for many fans even greater.

Let’s hope that from now on Nottingham Forest will put in as much emotion as the fans and come out of this season with something, because, at the end of the day. neither the players nor the fans want to be playing and watching football in the third tier of English football. I hope the song will only become memories of the worst times with Forest and not the present memories I have of the club.