Even though it seems to have escaped The Media’s notice. There was a football match on Saturday before a much publicised scuffle broke out. And for the nuetral,  what a stormer of a match it was – not that there were many nuetrals within the sell out crowd.

It was a bit too early in the season to even suggest (in betting terms)  a favourite for this game. Forest had made a slow start to the season with only 2 points to show from their 4 league games, although (Watford debacle apart) with good performances against teams fancied to be in the running. Derby had a better points haul, but had struggled to impress against teams that were fancied to be at the wrong end of the table come May next year.

Forest had impressively beaten a strong Middlesborough side in the League Cup in midweek, but had taken extra time to do so, whilst Derby had the luxury of a midweek break due to being dumped out of the cup by lowly Rotherham in the previous round.

Forest were short defensively with Perch, Wilson, Lynch & Bennett all out injured – whilst Derby had their higher profile players Commons, Hulse & Barker all coming back from early season injuries.

A difficult one to call, but with Derby having the better of recent results between the two teams, I wasn’t overly confident going into this game.

Surprisingly, Billy Davies made several changes from the team that knocked Middlesborough out of the cup. Blackstock & McGoldrick were his prefered front pairing for this encounter. The in-form Nathan Tyson was back on the left wing with Joe Garner replacing Paul Anderson on the right wing. It was no great surprise that Camp was preferred to Smith in goal. For the record, I believe that Smith is technically the better keeper – but this wasn’t the kind of game for Smiths jittery confidence (or is it the jittery confidence in Smith?).

Forest started with intent to attack and pressed forward through smart passing from McKenna, Blackstock & McGoldrick who fed the overlapping Gunter. Derby dealt poorly with Gunters cross and could only clear the ball as far out as Majewski who sent a screamer into the top corner giving Bywater no chance. 1 minute gone. 1-0 to Forest. Delerium in the home stands.

From the restart Forest were on the attack again with Joe Garner seeing a lot of the ball and also receiving a lot of overzealous attention from the opposition whilst not being afraid to dish it out as well. Most of Forests attacks were focused on getting the ball to the wings for crosses to be aimed at Blackstock & McGoldrick. Derby’s inexperienced Moxey & Buxton were struggling to cope with this and Forest were looking dangerous with McKenna & Majewski being able to pick up on Derby’s poor clearances and dictate the pace & play. Derby still had the occasional foray on the counter and it was from one of these that Cohen was caught out of his emergency left back position to allow Teale space to shoot. Fortunately it was a poor shot that ended well wide of Camps right hand post.

Garner was involved in further good work down the right and drew the foul from the hapless Commons (so nice to see him getting a taste of his own medicine). From the resulting free kick, Cohen sent a lovely ball into the box and it was either Blackstock or Hulse that got the header that sent the ball into the bottom corner to make it 2-0 Forest. Wonderland!

Forest still continued to press but it wasn’t all one way. Cohen was very unfortunate to be penalised for handball on the edge of the Forest box.  Derby’s free kick was crossed predictably to Hulse who predictably nodded it in the net at the second attempt after Camp had parried his first effort. Fortunately the referee had already blown for the very obvious shove by Hulse on Morgan and the goal didn’t stand. Derby did have another chance too not so long after. Clever running & interplay by Hulse set Pearson through, but Camp was alive to the danger and blocked the shot for Cohen to clear.

Just as half time was drawing near, a failed nutmeg attempt by the increasingly ineffective Commons allowed McKenna to feed Blackstock who sent a perfectly timed & weighted ball through for Nathan Tyson to round Bywater and slot home. 3-0 the reds. Half time comes and a standing ovation from all in red for their heroes.

The stands during half time were buzzing with most Forest fans unable to believe how poor Derby had been and how clinical Forest had been. Many (myself included) were still very wary of what had happened when we played Derby in the cup last season – but that couldn’t happen again, could it?

Derby emerged from their half-time oranges earlier and it was with much amusement that it was minus one Kristian Commons – although his very able replacement was Lee Croft who had been instrumental in Norwich’s win at the City Ground last Year. It was obvious that Croft had been brought on to target Cohen at left back and much of Derby’s second half play was through him.

Derby’s breakthrough though was from some route one play that saw Addison attempt an overhead kick that would most probably have gone well wide had it not hit Morgan and bounced beyond the wrong-footed Camp. 3-1 and the nerves started to kick in.

Billy Davies reacted to the goal by bringing on Adebola for the excellent Blackstock. If Buxton struggled with Blackstock – how would he cope with big Bombadele? Well as it happened, reasonably well as Forest struggled to get their foot on the ball and Savage started to get more involved & dictate play. Lee Croft again saw plenty of the ball and from one of his many crosses aimed for Hulse & Addison, Morgan headed clear but only to the onrushing Livermore who’s shot was deftlected past his own keeper by McKenna. 3-2 and the Forest fans are stunned with disbelief.

Davies response to this was to withdraw Joe Garner for Garath McLeary – presumably in the hope that some pace & trickery on the right wing would stretch Derby and give Adebola some much needed service. To an extent this worked as Forest started to come back into the game a little more. Derby still had the odd attacking move though with Teale skipping between Gunter & McKenna to provide a cross that Chambers had to get his boot to otherwise Hulse would have been in behind him.

Robbie Earnshaw came on for McGoldrick, but continued his poor vein of form – opting to shoot well wide from distance rather than feed the onrushing & better placed Tyson. Garath McLeary was lucky to stay on the pitch after unnecesarily getting involved in a tangle with Robbie Savage. In his typical  style, Savage had rugby tackled Majewski to the ground on the byline and continued to lay on top of him for that added niggle factor. As he got up McLeary pushed him on the shoulder to which Savage leaped to the ground as if poleaxed. He then gets up and starts to go towards McLeary before skipping off away from the Referee and fracas that he had just caused. Deserved yellow card for McLearys inexperience. 

As a last throw of the dice with 5 minutes of time to go, Derby replaced the struggling defender Jake Buxton with striker Paul Dickov. As a response to this Forest pulled Adebola back  as a 3rd centre half. Not ideal for Forest, but totally necessary. An unbelievable 5 minutes of stoppage time were signalled by the 4th official. To be fair, even when McKenna went off injured to leave 10 men,  Forest coped well with the best that Derby could muster for the 8 minutes of injury time actually played and the final whistle blew to the relief and joy of the 23 odd thousand Forest fans.

I’m not going to go into detail about the post match scuffle – except to say that Tyson has made better decisions, but if the Derby players hadn’t have over reacted, there would have been no incident.

Ratings:

Lee Camp – 7. Perhaps should have done better with the goals, but was immense in the first half when courage and confidence were needed as an example to the rest of the team.

Chris Cohen – 6. It’s not his fault he’s not a left back, but was the weak link in the team that was exposed time & again.

Chris Gunter – 7. Quiet but competent. Much improved on recent performances though.

Wes Morgan – 7. Immense 1st half, the only sniff Hulse got was through fouling Wes. Struggled under pressure in the 2nd.

Luke Chambers – 7. As Morgan.

Paul McKenna – 8. Kept Commons quiet in the 1st half and had a big hand in the 3rd goal.

Raddy Majewski – 8. (MOM). On that strike alone. Continued the great form from the midweek cup game.

Joe Garner – 7. Did well to annoy Derby and draw fouls. Faded in the 2nd half.

Nathan Tyson – 8. Not able to use his blistering pace on the wings too often, but made a greatly timed run and cool finish for the decisive 3rd goal.

David McGoldrick – 7. Generally quiet, but played some neat & tidy approach play. Held the ball up well.

Dexter Blackstock – 8. Excellent goal. A constant thorn in Derby’s side. Wonderful vision and timing to set Tyson up for the 3rd.

Subs:

Dele Adebola – 7. Joined the game when Forest were on the back foot & didn’t get much service. Perhaps should have done better when forcing a save from a free header?

Garath McLeary – 6. generally ineffective. Unnecessary booking.

Robbie Earnshaw – 5. Off the boil.

Billy Davies – 8. Got the team spot on to get the result. Fired the crowd up when needed towards the end of the 2nd half.

The officials – 8. No real complaints from me. Got suckered by Savage a few times – but then there aren’t many officials that wouldn’t. Allowed the game to flow quite well.