A long trip into darkness (or Nottingham)

Twas the night after Christmas...what better time to visit the gun crime capital of the UK? A bloated and hungover duo drifted north up the M1. Most routes into Nottingham were restricted or blocked. A warning? Were we approaching a plague town? Probably, the omens were bad.

After parking we wandered past an impressive row of fast food joints, convenience stores ('Open to 3 a.m!' Why bother to close? Or do you only open at midnight?) and Poundlands to the ground. We were nearly in the fabled North.

The City Ground is old fashioned but quite comfortable. I'd guess 500 to 600 hardy R's fans we housed in a lower tier corner of the ground. Quite a few small children made the trip, a couple directly in front of us, which ruined the evening from a swearing perspective. As the teams emerged it became clear that the a chunk of the hardcore Forest support were directly above us, and quite noisy. A very good way to restrict the impact of visiting fans, wish we would do it, though some good, intermittent, singing from the R's and the standard witty banter ("**** off, Northern scum!").

The Match

You will have all seen it on telly and formed your own opinions. I haven't had a look at the match thread yet, I'm guessing not jolly festive reading. Forest are a standard Championship outfit, run a lot, I think they tried to pass, no real quality. Mackie his usual useless self, applauded by the traveling fans at the beginning and when subbed, were ignored both times. Didn't notice him between these events.

First half, someone (Hill I think, wrong end of the ground) had an early header on target and Krancjar, after skipping around for an eternity, had a shot. Aside from these and Zamora's comedy shot, no threat at all from us. Carroll looked neat and tidy playing a bit further forward, Kranjcar lumbered around on the left, no idea what Jenas was supposed to be doing, but the folly of playing 3 players who can't pass (Hill, Dunne and Henry) at the base of the team soon became evident. Forest could have had 3 or 4 by half time, not because they were any good but because we were ponderous and porous at the back.

Subs at half time brightened things up a bit, some more intent, one sublime pass over the top from Carroll to Johnson, Hoilett busy, but lets be honest at no stage did we look like scoring, no clear cut chances/ real goalscoring opportunities created and the fiasco of the second goal did not flatter Forest as they were still creating opportunities that their non forward line were too inept to take.

Fair result and a big disappointment in terms of what we paid to see. If we are going to bore our way to promotion we'll have to do it better than this. If our full backs refuse/ are not allowed to go forward we will not create enough half chances. Perhaps Barton and Austin would have made a difference, but somehow I doubt it, and we can't rely on a walking suspension and a single striker anyway.

Player ratings Warning! I intend to utilise some of the less popular numbers.

Green - 3.78 Let 2 goals in.

Simpson - 4.21 Pretty anonymous, nothing going forward

Hill - 3.88 better than Dunne

Dunne - 2.13 sorry Nuts, a bit of a liability, pace and distribution dire

BAE - 1.39 - look, I know this bloke is good, but he wasn't tonight, useless going forward, strolling back too often. Has the soul of Boswinga transmigrated? He didn't care.

Henry - 0.79 - ****. I agree with Nuts a DCM releases the rest to play, but this bloke is rubbish, can't tackle, can't pass, takes an age to make his mind up, loses possession.

Phillips - 3.85 ran a bit, no impact

Carroll - 4.92 neat, tidy, tries to be positive, looked better higher up the pitch, he'll be a good player one day, but not in this team

Krancjar - 5.1 porky, lumbering but obviously the most skillful player on the pitch, the only one really offering anything different. But not as good or watchable as Adel.

Jenas - 3.77 - anonymous

Zamora - 0.03 - an embarrassment. If still not fit why did he play? A new striker essential, but won't make much difference unless we create more.

Subs:

Johnson - 4.12 - busy but ineffectual. At least he can run.

Hoilett - 4.99 - tried hard, does take players on, but usual blind alleys and no real end product. No support from BAE.

Oops, nearly forgot Benayoun - 1.1 - no on long enough to make any impression, other than his shorts were too big for him. Looks lightweight to me!

Thank you and goodnight.

 

Cheers SB, I enjoyed that. Great opening, I take it Nottingham isn't a recommended holiday destination?

The game? The less said the better. How this team is involved in the higher echelons of the table is difficult to fathom. Our first back-to-back defeats in the Championship for almost 70-75 games or so I believe. That is not to shabby if we managed to stop the rot, but I fear a resurgent Watford might inflict our third defeat in a row, then it's panic stations.


To sum up tonight, Such A Shame.

[video=youtube;zbZ9uCQW1Hk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbZ9uCQW1Hk[/video]

 

Its easy to see why we are still near the top - this league is crap mate. I think I may have made that point previously.

 

Great write up Stan and fair play for making the trip.

I must disagree with one or two things however. I've noticed a few people bizarrely having a pop at Dunne over his performance. I can't understand it. To me he was head and shoulders above the rest and he gobbled up everything that came his way. If it wasn't for him, we'd have been spanked summat bad. I was dead set against him joining and accused NUTS of bias because he's Irish but I have to admit I got it completely wrong. Him and Krancjar were the only two on our team who showed that they could play Premiership football - and that they cared.

And that brings me to Kranky. I think he's a very good player, infinitely better than that selfish tub of lard we had hanging like a noose around our necks for the last two years. The difference between him and Taarabt is, Krancjar will look up and pass the ball rather than trying to get by people he knows he has no chance of getting past. Taarabt simply didn't know the meaning of the word "pass". Or "team". Oh or "respect" etc. Again, I find it extraordinary how people can see things so differently.

But its all good and varying opinions make life interesting.

Thanks for the report Stan and I hope you don't take offence by me disagreeing with a couple of your conclusions.

 

Sorry Swords I can't tolerate disagreement with my views and intend to argue back. But perhaps not tonight. ......on Dunne he has been a rock for most of the season, but from where I was sitting tonight he was far from solid. But I did not have the benefit of camera angles and replays.

And the Taarabt reference was to wind you and Queens up. Reel him in.......

 

Personally, I thought Dunne was culpable for the first goal when he let Mackie gain possession.

 

You right about Krancjar. He was our only player who was a threat going forward. Clint was solid and cleared one off the line. Green made a tremendous save early on. otherwise performances were barely mid table level. Why d fæk did Arry play Zambia?

 

I would of liked to see more decimals places! Was it a 632 or a 5321?

Anyway I am very worried!

Our players are fat and none of them care!

Deeply concerned!

 

"We will win this league by 10 points!"...

In your dreams DT, we'll struggle to make the play-offs playing this cautious crap...

 

Fibber! I'm not actually that worried Dave, 3 wins in a row in this division and we are clear again and the opposition is so bad that could easily happen. Promotion is still easily on, my moan, as always, is that it's dull, dull, dull. I struggle to motivate myself to go and see this stuff though I do understand the plan and hope it works.

But we really weren't very good yesterday mate, whatever the tint of your specs.

 

Thanks for the report SB and well done on the long journey north.
I watched the match in my local with Goose last night and my frustration with this team went up several notches.
While the players are going through the motions adequately, there is no visible determination, energy or fight in this team at the moment. The body language of several of our players last night was not good. As usual, we passed the ball laterally again and every time we tried to pass it forward, we lost it. You could easily fit the Grand Canyon between our front man and the midfield. None of our midfielders bust a gut to close the gap. A blind man can see that our current formation isn't working. I've just watched the match again in the comfort of my sitting room and it is striking how few players we commit forward into the opposition box. Even with 5 minutes to go and the match won, Forest were still pouring players forward. Make no mistake about it, they wanted it more than us. That's the most worrying thing for me.
As a footnote, it's amazing how people can see a game differently. I honestly thought Dunne was immense last night and this was confirmed for me again this morning. He was by a country mile our best defender last night. Two Liverpool fans sitting behind me last night actually commented how well he was still playing. Amazing eh.....

 

Good post Nuts. There are worrying signs that only a fool would ignore.

 

Understatement! It was like the old Sky hoodoo days. Perhaps they are back. I actually thought we would lose and once I found out the line up I was convinced we would. I sincerely believe that had Ale stayed fit and other had not been so injured, we would now be well clear. It's part of the race - either staying fit or utilising what you do have to the best potential. Hoilett and AJ did make some impact so why not start with them to try and get an early goal, quiet the crowd down and build on that?

EDIT. Forgot to say thanks for the post Sb and immense respect to the traveling fans for making that journey on Boxing Day.

 

I thought that having both Hoillet and Phillips starting on the wings would allow us to exploit their full-backs and feed a crocked forward or advancing midfielder. Seeing BZ constantly on the left side putting in crosses was a complete waste of time (WTF - just get in the middle - isn't that what strikers are meant to do!!).
But hey, what do I know of these things

 

Excellent write-up Stan.

Henry and Zamora were an embarrassment and were rightly withdrawn, but why did they start?

Krancjar looked the only one likely to make something happen, but he's juts too fat.

The most frightening thing though is the lack of passion. Too many just don't seem to care enough.

Spot on re Benayoun.

 

Much respect to you and all of the 500 -600 that made the trip.

Can you tell me how many, if any, of the players came over to clap you after the game?

 

Afraid on this occasion my mood was such that we left the second the final whistle went, so did not see the post match events. I will say that, although there was frustration amongst our fans, there was no real bad mouthing of players, the support was strong, we were behind the team until the end. The patience shown with Zamora was saintly.