Nottingham Forest (h) – The ACN Preview

Jon: Let’s get it out of the way then. There’s a section of Norwich fans that will smugly decree on social media to any team who has freshly appointed the Nicest Guy in Football, Chris Hughton, that you have now subjected yourselves to at least a couple of years of depressingly attritional football. Saying that, I guess you’re only just getting over Karankaball, so maybe you’re accustomed to it? Having glanced at your results recently there does seem to be a lot of the familiar Hughton binary scorelines, how have the team actually been playing though?

David: Before we get down and groovy to Hughton, it’s fair to say that our playing style under Sabri Lamouchi wasn’t what one might call expansive either. That’s not to say it was dull or simplistic but it certainly wasn’t possession based.

Oddly enough, we’ve been playing alright. It’s not as keystone cops as the table suggests, more like half decent, creating some reasonable chances but then conceding a ridiculous goal and then just standing around staring at the sky.

We come in to this game having not scored a goal in four games. We’ve only won three all season: two with last minute goals and the other against Wycombe. Whichever way you look at it, that’s not very good.

There is a lingering a feeling that given the players we have and given that we are undergoing (another) huge period of transition what with signing literally a minibus full of players, things will get better. While that’s probably true, especially since performances haven’t been ‘that’ bad, it seems to be taking a long time to happen.

If that could happen soon then that would be very nice indeed thank you.

In all seriousness I’d say Hughton is an excellent manager at this level and if there’s anyone that could finally do something with Forest after so many have tried, then it’s probably him. Might take a couple of seasons mind, and your board don’t seem like the patient bunch.

You mention that minibus of players, who are we looking out for from the new boys, Knockaert accepted as a given?

Well that’s the weird thing: it’s not abundantly clear that for all bulking up of the squad, we are a stronger side.

Scott McKenna at the back looks solid (but he picked up a knock last week and might have temporarily lost his place). Up front Lyle Taylor is game: he runs the channels well and is a prickly customer for opposition defences. He’s put a few goals away yet there can be no hiding from the fact that he’s the main striker in a team is on the very opposite of a hot scoring streak. Your old mate Lewis Grabban is currently injured. Harry Arter points and shouts a lot in the middle.

The rest of them are in and out of the team, which is telling.

Old mate is a bit strong for Mr Grabban, but certainly glad he won’t be facing us.

As you will have probably seen, there will be 2,000 fans at Carrow Road on Wednesday night. How much have you missed matchdays and how wretched is iFollow (possible rhetorical question)?

While we have all naturally missed the rituals of a matchday, it’s surprising how quickly one adapts to different habits and routines. Before the second lockdown, finding non-elite football games to go to went some way to filling that Forest-sized hole. But then that was taken away from us since we can’t be trusted to have nice things.

iFollow is simply a big mess. The process of paying and watching is not an easy one and that’s before we get into how it is prone to throwing tantrums and just deciding that it doesn’t want to play ball with you and stomps off in a huff.

The whole issue of televising football matches needs rethinking but then again, we’ve been saying this for years so I don’t envisage much change.

It will be interesting to see how having up to 2000 fans in will play out in terms of any advantage. As it stands, I don’t feel that it’s much to complain about from our perspective (we’re still very much in tier 3). However, I reserve the right to perform a massive u-turn in the event of us losing to a highly contentious refereeing decision.

We were certainly on the wrong end of two or three poor decisions at Kenilworth Road which seem crowd influenced. Hopefully what this has proved to everyone is just how important fans are. I mean, it hasn’t, and the Premier League are still massive pricks, why do we pine to get promoted in the first place? And what’s the plan for Forest now, or is there one?

Too true. I’m not sure I pine for a return to the supposed promised land anymore; it all seems…well, a bit too much hassle and faff for very little reward. I just want a really good season that I can enjoy – a special moment that means something, for instance, not defecating the bed in a play-off situation. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

A plan? The plan always has been to attain promotion. It’s good to have ambition – nothing wrong with that – and a bit of dogged determination to achieve a stated sole goal is to be applauded. Yet the lack of contingency or patience should plan A not succeed is perhaps why we find ourselves where we are, which is arguably the same place we’ve been for twenty years now: staring up from the lower half of the second tier. Each time that objective is not achieved, we do an Edwyn Collins and rip it up and start again. It’s exhausting.

The short term plan is to score a goal. It’s that simple. A clean sheet would be nice too. But essentially, we need to realise where we are and get some points on the board. There seems to be a growing realisation and acceptance about what this season is about now. Let’s just say that it’s not about pushing for the play-offs.

Having been up (then down) several times, it’s not that great. The ascent is always better than the summit.

I can’t get my head around Forest being in a relegation scrap given your resources and manager, surely you’ll pull away before long? Oh and please forget about keeping a clean sheet on Wednesday.

That has been the mantra but we are over a third of the way through the season. We are about to embark on a sustained exercise in wheeling out such clichés as ‘the league table doesn’t lie’ and ‘too good to go down’. One of these will turn out to be true – hoping it’s the latter.

Thanks for the heads up about a clean sheet. Cheers. Appreciate that. Still, at least we got through this without mention of our last visit to Carrow Road. (Please don’t ask me a question on it. Still too soon.)

Well I won’t ask you about it, but I will remind you that you wrote an excellent piece about it for our print fanzine, still available here for those interested.

Talking of fanzines, tell us a bit about your latest venture, Trevor Francis Tracksuits?

It was a horrible experience.

It seemed a shame that there wasn’t a fanzine to accompany the phrase ‘Trevor Francis Tracksuits’, so I created one.

Any proceeds go to a nominated charity. There are also revelations of Forest goals (stop sniggering at the back), using Subbuteo.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNPdWB5ejTCN7MTuppbZoxQ

I’ve also been writing some pieces on the different types of football matches that exist, for instance, the midweek home game:

https://howwasthegame.webnode.com/l/the-midweek-home-game/

Thought you might like it, given it’s a midweek home game for you lot.

In terms of a prediction, you’ll probably win, but it would be an empty one, like laughing at a fallen child.

Given our current injury crisis, and the fact we actually have children on the subs bench, we will take many falling children to laugh at if that means three points.

You’ll certainly be in with a chance because of our levels of fatigue, but I’m hoping our quality in the final third can prevail again. 1-0 Norwich, late winner.

That would be so very us this season: work hard, play reasonably well then gift you a goal to undo all the decent work.

Classic Forest.