?The table does not lie?

A well used phrase, most recently employed by the beleaguered fans of the, eh, pride of the East Midland?s Nottingham Forest. Yet Andy Gray and his band of Merry Men over at Sky, having hit the bull?s eye again on Saturday, may beg to differ after proving to the world that the above comment may not always be true. So what went wrong?

Sky must love the former (emphasis on ?former?) European Champions who have managed to deliver that ?giant killing? act live on TV for the third time in a year. The hoodoo of the camera has struck again it would seem. Twice in one season and Colin Calderwood?s reputation must be getting a battering. He will know though that the bad performance was far from being the result of a show-time freeze but rather the stark illustration of a managerial error.

Despite his good start not all Tricky Tree?s are convinced with the new gaffer. ?He lacks experience and is not good enough to get us promoted?. Northampton, that is, aside. The 352 formation is subject to much scepticism yet we have achieved the results so far this season and although performances have been poor we have started to look like the good passing side that we didn?t last season. The second half against Swansea was the culmination of this gradual improvement with three goals created from a good flowing passing movement.

With that in mind then, the change back to 442 against Scunthorpe was unbelievable to say the least. In doing so Calderwood exposed all the defensive frailties he has done so well to protect over the last 12 games. Julian Bennett for starters is a great left sided defensive midfielder as we now see but he was ripped to shreds playing in the orthodox left back role, three of the Scunny goals coming from this side. The formation also allowed him no cover to give licence to roam forward in support of the tightly marked Kris Commons. As a result their defence came under no real pressure and our most creative midfielder may have well been left off the pitch.

The three central defenders we have been employing has in the past created a wall in our penalty area for which the only option is for opponents to play to our strengths by crossing the ball into the box to be headed away. On Saturday we allowed them to play their way into the area and indeed one goal came from simple 1-2 passing between Sharpe and Keogh.

Finally I have mentioned before in an early article our midfield is devoid of quality, as a result Calderwood has packed it to compensate. The 442 left us thread bare in this area and we were simply overrun by a opponent who not only supported in attack but filled in the gaps in defence.

Nothing can be taken away from a quality Scunthorpe performance but they must have been encouraged by a team who played a ?new? formation against them for which they weren?t prepared. Furthermore the failure by the manager to change things in the second half when it was all tumbling down around him, his only substitution being like for like, paints a somewhat rabbit in the headlights image. On the face of it the former Forest favourite Brian Laws would perhaps have been a better man at the helm given the impressive all round football his team played. However, despite the opinions of a small number of my peers, I believe Calderwood has the attributes to succeed at this club, if that is, he is able to learn from his (and particularly from this) mistakes.

So after one win in six all Forest fans will be hoping this is our sticky patch for the season from which it will be a blessing to come out still on top even if not entirely unscathed. Gillingham away is where we start needing to start rebuilding on the pitch, but what about off it?

It has been disappointing to say the least that our players on loan have not made much impact whilst being away. Spencer Weir-Daly has made a few appearances from the bench at the League?s bottom club Macclesfield, John Paul-Pitman has failed to impress at Bury, Vincent Fernandez has been an unused sub and Kevin James was returned by Yeovil with a ?thanks, but no thanks? note.

Also, does Calderwood seriously think our current crop of midfielders are good enough to challenge for the League title? Are we doing anything about shoring up our Achilles heel? If so can there be such a dearth of decent midfielders available that David Pleat has found nobody that could add to our squad, or is Nigel Doughty tightening up the purse strings now? Remember we may be outside the transfer window but we can always bring someone in on loan with a view to a signing in January. Perhaps the infusion of some new blood will awaken us from this tepid spell.

Maybe my questions are to be answered by the ?Milkybar kid?. Making his debut against the Swans last week, Robert Hughes has impressed in the reserves and may just be the midfielder we are looking for. The results coming from our Under 18s have been very encouraging and the current crop on the fringes of the team have played well alongside experience in the Pontin?s Reserve League, which we currently top.

So will the Academy be bailing the City Ground out from yet another sticky situation? We can only hope.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Nottingham Forest. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.