Left Brian: December

Ayup, youth. Remember your maths lessons from school? See if you’re still any good wi’these. What do these numbers mean: 1865; 1979; 1991; 3; 5-2; 7-1; 1975; 30,602; 75,000,000; 8,500,000?*

 

The game of football can often be described in numbers, whether good or bad. As sports fans we’re obsessed with stats and numbers, almost to the point that the beauty of the game is lost and all that remains is a number. A number of goals, a number of points, numbers of passes, percentage of possession, numbers of fans: the list goes on, especially when you bring money into the equation. A new number is now on the lips of many Forest fans, though: 635. Six hundred and thirty-five. No, it’s not my fee for writing this (not even in pence!); it’s not the amount left in the coffers at Forest (again, not even in pence); and it’s not the amount of Forest fans who managed to stay until the final whistle against Leeds. It’s the time, in minutes, we have had to wait for a Forest goal.

 

Ironically, the goals that bookended the 635 minutes were both against Ipswich, in games that saw us put three past them both times. Strange how football works out like that. Unfortunately, much as I’d like to see us scoring thrice weekly, we can’t play Ipswich every week.

 

Six hundred and thirty-five minutes is not only a long time, it’s an expensive time. Over £210 worth of tickets to watch Forest play (before you even add transport) and to not see a goal, let alone a win, is terrible. The quality of the ‘product’ being sold is substantially sub-par. It’s devoid of effort, and the post-game reflections of Steve Cotterill have been, for want of a better word, bemusing. He reasoned that losing 1-0 is okay, since we could have been losing 4- or 5-0. It’s the same amount of points, though, Steve: a big fat zero to match our ‘goals for’ tally over the past 635 minutes. I wonder if the club holds a goal of the month competition. It would have to have been won with a computer game playoff, as the nets at the city ground and beyond have only been used to stop Camp having to retrieve the ball from the crowd since mid November.

 

On the upside, I’ve not heard that awful Chelsea Dagger song for months.  

 

As I’ve said previously, losing isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s the manner of the defeats and what surrounds them. No effort on the pitch and no humility off it. We see throwaway newspaper interviews with our players giving it the talk, but come Saturday they don’t live up to it. I read stories of the players “putting bodies on the line” (cliché alert!) only for us to lose the next two games 0-1 with a whimper. The club haven’t offered any form of apology for the situation; they haven’t been honest and haven’t offered any token refunds to the fans who have spent bundles of cash supporting the team. They must have saved a fortune on goal bonuses – repay the fans! 635 minutes of not scoring is frustrating, it’s wrong, and I’m not sure the club acknowledges how bad it is for the fans.

 

In the 90 minutes that followed the goal-fest at Ipswich, we once again drew a blank at home to Leicester in the FA Cup, which means we now have the added burden of a replay.

 

The second Ipswich game came at the right time. Things were looking desperate and three good goals have stemmed that somewhat. However, our next five games are Southampton (H), Leicester (A, Cup) West Ham (A), Burnley (H), Derby (A). I’m praying Steve puts out a full reserve side against Leicester for the cup game, with the possible exception of Blackstock, who could do with the match minutes. Beyond that, I don’t see where our next goal is going to come from, let alone our next point. Southampton, who are flying high with virtually the same squad they had in League One last season, are looking much stronger than us. West Ham, with their multi-million-pound players, are all but promoted. Burnley slipped five past us quite easily a few weeks ago and Derby are, well, Derby. Looking at that sort of run this time last year, I’d have expected to make the fourth round of the Cup and to have taken a minimum of 10 points from the available 12. Now I hope we’re dumped out of the cup and, although I hope for 12 points, I can realistically see us maybe getting 3 if we get lucky. I hope I’m wrong, of course, but will any of you really be putting big money on Forest winning many of those games?  

 

It’s a poor situation to be in, but there are glimmers of hope. We have managed to extend the loan period of Greg Cunningham until the end of the season and have seen a debut given to Kieron Freeman, who looked handy.

Unlike most things Forest, we’re actually bang on-trend in one sense. With Man Utd bringing back Paul Scholes and Arsenal bringing back Thierry Henry, we’ve managed to bring back Marlon Harewood... I mock, but some have said that in his prime Marlon was better than Collymore. I think they may have been mocking too, though. Eight years ago Marlon was a great player, no doubting that, but can he still do it? Is he the man we should be turning to? What on earth has happened to the policy of young players? I know Nigel Doughty has cut his involvement somewhat, but can the club really go from having the aim of buying and nurturing young talent to, well, bringing back the young talent we flogged off eight years ago? If we’re after older players, Brett Ormerod has this week linked up with recently released Forest youngster Neil Byrne at Rochdale. I’m not one to be critical, but Ormerod has spent some recent time in the Premiership; Harewood has spent some recent time in China. I know which of the two I’d prefer to turn to. 

 

So, with Andy Reid and Marlon Harewood turning out in the Garibaldi, financial woes hanging over our heads, and Championship status football in danger of exiting the City Ground, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m in some sort of time loop. What’s David Prutton doing now?

 

I’m going to change the subject slightly, and talk about something of which the Forest fans have recently been accused. As ever, when we play Leicester the rumours of racism come out. It’s generally small pockets of fans accusing other small pockets of fans, and often seems a little trite, and certainly not representative of either group of fans. This time, however, it was slightly different. The Foxes had twice the usual allocation of tickets – mainly because we’re pretty rubbish at the minute and Leicester at home isn’t much of a draw. The danger with giving so many away tickets is that the more unruly element gets tickets, creating the potential for trouble. Flare-ups outside the ground meant that, despite the game being rubbish, tension in the stands was rising. Chants went back and forth, and, inevitably, mention of Leicester’s multi-cultural heritage was made. Someone decided to film it and post it on YouTube and now all of a sudden there’s a group of racist Forest fans ‘representing’ us all in the media. 

 

I’d like to be the first to distance myself from those who think it OK to chant such things, and welcome the other 99.9% of Forest fans to do the same. If you were near anyone making racist chanting at the game, please inform the club. They have a responsibility to ban them and, to be honest, I don’t want to share this club of ours with people who cannot see beyond the colour of someone’s skin. Nottingham is a wonderfully diverse city, and Nottingham Forest a wonderfully diverse club. The club where England’s first black player made his name is absolutely no place for racism.

 

Sorry to go a bit serious, duck, it’s just one of those things that I think needs to be said, and unfortunately the club have remained silent despite the allegations. Kick it out of Forest, and kick it out of the game. Come on Mr Clark, do something about this.  

 

So, what’s coming up? Well, the replay with Leicester is on your tellybox next week, if you get ESPN. If you don’t, they’ll be showing it in your local watering hole, I imagine, and if they aren’t, find one that is. Aside from that, we have some tricky league games. Southampton are faltering, but West Ham aren’t. Burnley are a strong side. And then it’s the big one, time for revenge: away at Derby. We need to get the turnaround done in time for that one.

 

To echo the words of a man who wouldn’t have stood for the racism that went on against Leicester: Be Good, Young Man.

 

I’ll see thee.

 

* Those numbers: year of formation; year we first won the European Cup; year Gazza and Roger Milford cheated us out of the FA Cup; Psycho; possibly the best Forest victory over Derby ever; the beating of Sheffield Wednesday in the mid 90s; the year Brian Clough joined the Red Revolution; the official capacity of the City Ground if you include those seats in the Lower Bridgford that have a view of a wall rather than the Trent End; the amount of money Nigel Doughty has spent on getting us where we are; the amount we got for Stan Collymore.

 

Lost That Loving Feeling website